


Kashmir

by deadlybride



Series: Physical Graffiti [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Hallucinations, M/M, Mental Instability, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 19:13:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 63,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was younger he'd thought that there was no way this could ever be his life. Two men, two beds, little stained sinks and kitchenettes, nothing permanent but the car outside and the weird cramped feeling that his whole existence was travel-sized. Moving from one grave to another, digging up bones to burn away memories. That horrible hollow space in his chest, spending every other minute waiting for—something. Anything else.</p><p>He watches the slivers of Dean that appear in the half-cracked bathroom doorway. Flash of pale blue towel, glimpse of startlingly fair skin, sink running while he shaves. He'd gotten something else, gotten four years and then ten horrible months of life alone, gotten himself stretched so thin it's a miracle he didn't just tear right in half. He'd thought he'd known something about nightmares.</p><p>"Not even the half of it, Sam," Lucifer says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes up immediately after 'The Rain Song' left off (literally the next morning), now from Sam's point of view. Canon divergence is slight: Sam's hallucinations of Lucifer are necessarily a little different from how they were depicted in the show, and his and Dean's behavior is necessarily a little different, too. They won't be hitting all the same cases as they did in the show, but major plot points should stay intact.

If Sam had to describe what it felt like when the wall came down, he wouldn't call it shattering. Dean seems to conceive of the whole thing very literally, and Sam can't blame him from how he's told Death explained it. There was the whole person he'd been before, and there was the body without a soul, and there was the soul alone who'd been in the cage, and Death had described a neat delineation between the whole Sam and the two split-apart halves. Maybe that's what He'd intended. Who knows. Regardless, what Sam felt when Castiel touched him was not like solid stone exploding into shards, or concrete blasted apart with C4. Rather, it was like—

When he and Dean were younger they'd occasionally been dumped at Pastor Jim's in Minnesota. He doesn't remember much about the pastor's house, really—the syrupy sweetness of sixties folk music, the smell of coffee and musty books, the shabbiness that came with a life lived for other people. When he'd been about six, with Dean around ten or eleven, they'd been left there for almost three weeks of a wet April while their dad chased some unknown business halfway across the country. Dean had been bored out of his skull within about two days and, somehow, Jim hadn't smacked the smart mouth right off his face as their dad would have but instead had brought Dean out to his junk-cluttered backyard and just said _here, why don't you build something_. Sam doesn't remember what Dean had eventually rigged up—there's a vague impression, at the back of his mind, of a half-repaired tricycle, Dean trying to convince him to go for a spin around the yard—but he does remember wandering among the soggy woodpiles, the wild tangled weeds grown up into shrubs, the stacks of rusty sheet metal. He remembers with microscopic clarity, even now, sitting on his haunches in muddy jeans, one of those flimsy sheets of metal leaned up against a wall in front of him, dewy with recent rain. There had been a dark orange spot of rust near the middle, oddly soft-looking amidst the grey. The sensation of reaching out a cautious hand and feeling what should have been solid metal crumble under his fingers like fine, sharp sand has stuck with him his whole life. When he'd looked closer he'd seen that the iron had been perforated in half a dozen places. He'd rubbed his fingertips into his palm and the damp orange dust had stained his hand, deep. Right about where the stitched-up cut is marring his palm now, in fact.

He scratches at the back of his hand under the bandage, stares up at the ceiling in the dim light of dawning morning. He doesn't have to stay on the cot in the panic room anymore, surrounded by salt and sigils, and so has been upgraded to the couch in the sitting room. He thinks Dean had been sleeping here before, but it's not like he'll get a straight answer if he asks. Instead, when he looks over, he can see the blurred outlines of his brother under a blanket, stretched in a long line on the floor near the sofa. They'd gone to bed—well, to couch and floor—late, after the storm had blown itself down to a steady drizzle and Bobby had retreated upstairs. Dean's pillow is snugged up against the couch leg and he's on his stomach, head turned away; not snoring, but nearly there. If Sam stretched out an arm he could brush his fingers over the bared back of his neck.

The television is still on, muted, and an overly made up weather girl is informing the camera that they expect the low pressure front to keep moving south, maybe all the way to Nebraska. Sam watches her mouth shaping silent words, a pink-lipsticked bow with flashing glimpses of straight white teeth. She looks happy. Through the windows come the faint sounds of birds, chirpily greeting the day, and he thinks about standing up, but—really, there isn't much of a point.

 

“Rise and shine, Sammy," he hears, and opens his eyes to Dean leaning over him, a mug in his outstretched hand. Coffee-smell, probably a little burnt from Bobby's crappy machine, and he wraps his fingers around it. He catches Dean's fingers, too, but there's no reaction—Dean just pulls away easy, walks back out toward the kitchen and the smell of toast.

He sits up, slowly. The constant headache has reduced down to a low throbbing cupped around the back of his skull, at the top of his spine. He lets his legs stretch out over the floor, toes digging into Dean's discarded blanket, and wraps both hands around the mug. The warmth seeps through the bandage, makes his stitches itch. Dean's walking around barefoot, in jeans and grease-stained t-shirt. Sam watches the way his shoulders move under the thin cotton while he stands at the old stove, poking at something in a skillet.

"What's the plan for the day?" Sam says, after a while.

Dean shrugs. He unloads the contents of the skillet onto two plates and walks back to sit on the other end of the couch. Sam takes the plate pushed under his nose: eggs, scrambled hard, two slices of toast.

"I'm still working on the car," Dean says, around a mouthful of eggs. "You're still—you know, recuperating. Bobby's looking into the whole new God situation. Same plan as yesterday, basically. Hope the world doesn't end."

Sam taps his thumb against the side of the plate. The eggs are a perfectly tolerable shade of butter-yellow, speckled with black pepper. The toast is a little darker than he'd prefer, but there's a smear of apricot jam that he'd have never expected from Bobby's kitchen. It's pretty, really, on the blue plate. When he looks up again, Dean's watching him.

He clears his throat. "This looks good."

It earns him a raised eyebrow. "My breakfast specialty," Dean says, and he knocks his fork against Sam's plate. "You should try putting it in your mouth. Traditional method for eating."

He smiles, and it shouldn't feel unfamiliar on his face. Dean's still watching him, unabashed. If this were a year and a half ago he knows Dean would've pretended, would've already been doing something else by the time Sam glanced over. Then, if Sam had asked, he would've rolled his eyes, feigned indifference, as though anyone could ever believe Dean was indifferent. Now, if Sam asks, he doesn't know what answer he'll get.

He puts a forkful of eggs in his mouth, instead. They really are good.

"Good job, Sammy," Dean says, bone dry, but his hand on Sam's shoulder is warm. The touch disappears when Dean gets up, takes his empty plate back to the kitchen, and Sam closes his eyes. Chew, swallow, gulp of coffee gone lukewarm. It's all very immediate and his head spins for a second.

"Hey, I'm going out," he hears, and opens his eyes again to see Dean shrugging into the thick blue mechanic's shirt. "Come on out when you're done. You remember enough to hand me the right wrenches, you think?"

"Sure thing," he says, and Dean nods.

Alone, again, he finishes the plate of eggs, swallows down the last of the coffee. He takes his time finding his boots, abandoned under the couch, and it's slow work lacing them with only one working hand but he manages. At the edge of his hearing there's the faint iron chime of chains, and high delighted laughter, and he stands and heads outside into the morning light to find his brother standing over the half-built guts of the Impala, healthy and tanned and giving him a little grin. He sits on the cooler next to the car, hands Dean the pliers when he's asked. Their fingers brush together and his stomach warms. He follows the sure, strong movements of Dean's hands, hears metal on metal and blinks to find the light tinged a little red, and has no idea, none, which details are real.

 

 

Progress on the Impala is slow. Sam helps when he can, but despite the lessons he's had over the years he doesn't know the car like Dean does. Not even close.  Mostly, he sits and reads—sometimes perched on a cooler next to the car, sometimes curled into the corner of Bobby's couch. The cushion there is starting to conform to his ass. Bobby works the phones and keeps up an idle chatter, and when they're all in the house together they try to keep it as normal as possible. Sam doesn't know if they're doing it for his benefit, or for Dean's.

Sam listens to the radio, watches the news on Bobby's tiny TV. He watches how Dean—doesn't. Whenever there's a new report of a trenchcoated man, of unexplained phenomena and mysterious murders, an expression flickers over Dean's face almost too fast to catch. Maybe pain. Maybe resignation. After a week, when Bobby turns on the news in the morning, Dean practically evaporates from the room.

He's used to Dean's protestations against faith. He's always claimed that evidence and hard fact were the only things worth believing in. However, having failed Dean spectacularly, and still—still!—having been given the benefit of the doubt, knowing that despite everything Dean will still fight and die and give everything for him, Sam is aware that his big brother is full of shit. He wonders how much faith Dean has in Castiel. Too much, maybe, he thinks, watching how Dean's back tenses when yet another story comes over the radio set up by the car. At least Bobby hasn't failed him yet. He reaches over and twiddles the knob and the story about twenty mysteriously killed in Arkansas becomes Alice in Chains. It's a little staticky, but Dean's shoulders relax, and Sam returns to the book on werewolves, leaning his back against the sun-warmed side panel of his brother's car.

He's not sure how much time passes, but when he looks up again the sun is setting. The radio has moved on to something new, and he doesn't recognize it but likes the low, heavy bass, the mournful scrape of a man's deep voice. He puts down the book and stretches, long and tight against the car, and when he opens his eyes again there's nothing but empty dark.

"Dean?" he says, blinking hard, and bright white flashes across his vision. He recognizes the flaring light of an archangel's arrival and closes his eyes, shoves back, smashing himself as close as he can to the Impala's familiar steel, and then there are hands on his throat, on his chest and thighs, cold as knives, and he can already feel his flesh giving way under the assault, and then—

He opens his eyes, gasping, and the sun is setting. He's still holding the book, tight enough that he's torn out two pages. They slip to the muddy ground when he jerks to his feet. When he looks to his left, Dean is still shoulder-deep in the car, singing under his breath to the song Sam doesn't recognize on the radio, and he doesn't seem to have noticed Sam's sudden panic.

"Hey," he hears, interrupting his frantic tamping down on the fear writhes through his belly, even now. "Hand me that socket wrench, the one by my beer, would you?"

Sam swallows and blinks hard. He bends and picks up the two lost pages and tucks them into the book as a dirty placeholder. He can see the wrench Dean's talking about, on the little worktable up against the shed, not three feet from where Dean's leaned up into the car.

"What," he says, and his voice is steady, "too far away for you, lazy-ass?"

"Shut up," Dean says, absently, and when Sam does hand over the wrench his fingers are just barely shaking, but Dean's eyes are on the dark workings of the Impala and he doesn't notice. "Hey, is Bobby making something for dinner, or is it fend for yourself in there?"

He sounds calm, normal. Sam tries his best to emulate it. "I'll go see."

Dean hums, clearly distracted, and something in the engine thunks loudly. It provokes a loud _hah!_ from Dean, but he doesn't pull his head out. "Well, if it is FFY, I call dibs on the leftover pizza."

"Sure thing," Sam says, and when he goes back into the house Bobby looks up from his desk and gives him a searching look, but all he can do is smile. "Any word on dinner, Bobby?"

Across the living room, he can see when Bobby's shoulders relax. "I ain't your caretaker, kid. The kitchen's right there."

"Fend for yourself, Dean," he calls back, over his shoulder, and Dean says, "Keep those big mitts off my pizza, Sam!" and it should be normal, easy. It should be. Sam takes the box of pizza out of the fridge and does his best to pretend it is.

 

By the next day, the car's ready to paint. Sam sits alone in the living room, book discarded on the couch next to him and his head buried in his hands. On the television, a report is coming in, quiet, about an explosion at a publishing house in Salt Lake City, the merchandise lost and dozens of people injured, and he thinks, _we have to do something_ , but his head hurts too much to stand up just yet.

He doesn't remember everything. It'd be impossible to, anyway. He has facts, from the year his body wandered soulless, and he knows most of what he did but doesn't understand, at all, the lack of emotion behind it. Knowing that he killed, and lied, and fucked, and betrayed—he can remember with crystal clarity Dean's bleary-eyed bewilderment, blood smeared over his lips, wondering why Sam hadn't saved him. Unbearable. So foreign it doesn't feel like it was him; it's like a story he's half-remembering that happened to someone else. Obviously, from his time in the cage there are photo-bright snapshots of all sorts of things, things he can't dwell on. There's no point. He got out—Dean got him out, despite everything—and now that his soul is restored and he's back on Earth he'll be fine, eventually. He's sure of it.

He pushes his hands through his hair. The guy on the television is now interviewing teary-eyed women near the site of the explosion, doing a bad job of pretending to be sympathetic. Sam watches sightlessly, their confused renditions of the story reduced to a low babble at the edge of his radar. He's fine with not knowing much about the horrible soulless year, and more than fine with ignoring the cage as much as he can. Still, there's a six month span just at his back that he wishes he were a little clearer on. Sometimes, as they sit around and eat and pretend to be normal, Dean or Bobby will reference something from the time Sam was supposedly whole and he—doesn't remember it. At all. Or, sometimes, he does, but Dean recounts to Bobby a version of the story that Sam doesn't quite recognize, and he thinks, _Wait, that wasn't what happened—_ and then he bites his tongue, looks down at his plate, because what he remembers can't possibly be right. When he looks up again Dean might be looking at him or he might not, but there’s no way that they could just be sitting here, Dean calm and easy with him, passing over a cold beer, if what’s in Sam’s head had actually happened. A punch would have been thrown, at the very least.

_Leakage_ , he thinks, and remembers again that piece of scrap metal from so long ago. Holes torn right through, scattershot across its supposedly solid surface and, though the rain sat on it in still pools, as soon as Sam touched it the water would shift, run, skate across in thin runnels that poured right down through the holes to the dark space beneath. His consciousness is, apparently, not much better. There's a rattling of chains, at the edge of his hearing, and for a moment he hears an echo of laughter, can feel warm skin under his hand. Memories are spilling through, from one version of his life to the others, and his heartbeat throbs at his temples and he just can't take any more.

He's not sure what he's going to say to Dean. The truth seems—unfeasible. He makes his way out of the dark house into Bobby's junk-scattered yard, and the lights are on in the garage where Dean's taping up the car for the first coat of new black paint. His head hurts, even his footsteps jostling too much for comfort, and so he approaches slowly. Slow enough that he hears the quiet buzz of their voices before he can quite hear what's being talked about, the sound of low male conversation such a part of his childhood he's thrown, for a second.

“If Sam says he’s good, then—good.”

It makes him stop, just outside the doors, and so he's standing stock-still when Bobby says, "What, you believe him?" and he hears Dean pause and then say, "No, of course not."

He moves a step closer. Bobby's leaned up against the aluminum-siding wall, beer bottle dangling from loose fingers. He can only see part of Dean’s face through the dirty window but he can see his hands, and they’re clenched into fists where he’s leaning into the sanded-smooth steel of the car.

“You know why? Because we never catch a break.”

Sam swallows. Bobby shifts his weight. “You kept him together for six months, kid, even if you won’t tell me how,” and Sam takes in a breath, because—what?

Dean laughs, in that way he does when it seems like he could cheerfully put his fist through concrete, and might. “Yeah, and look how much good it did. I just wanted him…” He trails off. Sighs. “Just this one thing, I thought might turn out okay. But, hey. Stupid to get my hopes up, right?”

Sam can’t take any more and scuffs his boot loudly in the dirt by the door, pretends he’s just coming in. “Hey,” he says, stepping over the oil-stained floor into the light.

Bobby shifts again. He wouldn’t look guilty if Sam didn’t know what they’d just been talking about. “Hey, how are you feeling, sport?”

Dean’s giving him one of those long, steady looks. Sam doesn’t have to think twice. “Can’t complain,” he says, smiling a little. It’s not, technically, a lie.

It earns him an up-and-down glance from Dean, but he stays relaxed and watches Dean try to believe him. “Great,” he says, and it’s about the worst bluff Sam’s ever seen him throw. “So. What’s the word?”

“Well,” Sam says, and ignores the pain at the back of his skull, crosses his arms loosely over his chest so they won’t see his hands shake. “A publishing house literally exploded about an hour ago.”

Dean’s face falls, distracted, and Sam thinks, _Maybe if we focus on Cas he won’t notice._ A little betrayal, hardly enough to stick in his throat, to make Dean think about how to ease the fallout from a much, much greater one.

 

 

Mercurial he may be, but Crowley delivers the goods. A ritual to enslave a Horseman—the things they get up to, sometimes, even Sam can't believe. Dean paints the car, puts on a coat of wax. Sam sits on the hood of an old Challenger, watches Dean put on the finishing touches, wiping the last traces of polish off the chrome. The sun's high and bright and Sam has to squint a little, but doesn't take his eyes off Dean as he pops the cap on a beer and lifts it in a silent toast to his car. The Impala gleams, in mint condition once again, and for a second Sam closes his eyes and lifts his face to the sun and can believe that nothing at all has changed, that he's twenty-three again and seeing this scene for the first time.

"Nine hours to Boulder, kids," Bobby says, and Sam looks to see bags piled around their feet.

He stifles a sigh and slides off the car, squares his shoulders. "Time to go," he says to Dean, and Dean glances at him with an unreadable expression and then drinks off his beer in three long swallows.

"Okay," he says when he finishes, on a long puff of breath. "But if anyone thinks we're not playing Zeppelin as the inaugural music for her virgin ride, they can just drive their own damn car."

 

Death is... not what Sam had expected. Dean had tried to explain, but for all his storytelling skills he'd completely left out the overwhelming sense of terror you felt when He stood in the room. Even slurping at a soda, eating the ridiculous fried pickles Dean had made them stop for, Sam couldn't get over the feeling that he was in the room with a giant. He isn't often made to feel so small. He'd wanted to meet Him, too, because—well, this was the guy who'd helped them defeat Lucifer and Michael, who'd come when Dean called, and who'd pulled Sam out of the  cage and given him the best hope he had of surviving. Even if it was only because Dean amused Him, it was still something Sam felt grateful for.

Of course, that Death could, with a glance, determine that the "wall" was destroyed was less than ideal. That he'd told Bobby and Dean about the hallucinations was much, much worse.

Sam doesn't sleep on the way back from the Weiss's house. He sits in the back seat, Bobby in the passenger side up front trying to come up with ways they can lure Castiel into some kind of trap, but he's not listening. Instead he leans his head up against the sparkling-new window and watches Dean drive. He's shifting smoothly, hands easy on the wheel, but his shoulders are one tense unbroken line and Sam knows he's responsible. When they pass another car, the headlights fill up the space inside and shine gold on Dean's stubble, on the hard line of his mouth, and Sam thinks about running his fingers over the unsmiling line of it and thinks, too, _I wish He hadn't told_.

He's thinking the same thing on Saturday morning, when they finally arrive back at Bobby's and Dean swings out of the car without a word to disappear inside the house. Bobby glances back at Sam, but there's really nothing to say. At this point, it's not clear what has pissed Dean off more: the utter failure of their plan to kill the new God, or Sam, once again lying-by-omission. He helps Bobby bring in the bags, watches Bobby climb the stairs up to bed, and he sits back in his corner of the couch and tries to sleep. All he can hear, though, is the hiss of the shower from the bathroom at the top of the stairs. It seems to go on for a long time. Long enough that, by the time Dean finally does come back down, hair dark brown with damp and his eyelashes spiky, Sam has almost drifted off. He blinks, starts to sit up, but Dean holds out a hand and he subsides. Dean doesn't look at him, really, but he crawls onto the blankets next to the couch all the same, still pillows his head on his arms right up next to where Sam sleeps, close enough to touch. For a second Sam thinks about it, thinks about combing his fingertips through the short hair at the back of his skull, sliding down to cover the vulnerable skin on his neck, but—but.

"Should've told me," he hears eventually. It's muffled by Dean's arms. "Shouldn't have to find out this crap from Death, Sam."

Sam looks up at the ceiling. It's only about eight in the morning and the light coming in from the windows is clean-looking, white. The lace pattern from Bobby's grimy curtains spreads a dappling shadow over the walls and beams and he focuses on that, traces the lines of it with his eyes. "Nothing you can do about it," he says.

Quiet follows this, barring the few hopeful birds chittering outside the windows. "Maybe, maybe not," Dean responds, eventually. He hasn't moved, still talking into the shadow of his arms. "But you can't keep this to yourself."

"Not now. Thanks, Death." Dean snorts, lightly, and turns over. He's got his back turned fully to Sam, lying on his side on the floor so Sam can see the edge of his profile. His eyes are open but Sam has no idea what he's looking at. "I know, you want to help, but there's nothing you can do. And you have enough crap piling on you right now, I thought—I didn't want to burst your bubble, I guess. I have it under control."

Dean closes his eyes. "What, exactly, is under control?"

Sam looks down at him, at the lines next to his eyes, at the thin line of a scar Sam doesn’t remember him getting above the collar of his t-shirt. He looks tired, defeated. Sam wants nothing more in that moment than to slide down to the floor next to him, to gather him backwards into his arms and hold on tight, to be an anchor for them both.

"I know what's real and what's not,” he says, after a little too much hesitation.

Sam expects more argument, but Dean doesn’t respond. Sam watches the slow rise of his ribs when he takes a long breath and then he closes his eyes, turns his face into the upholstery, and hopes he doesn’t dream.

 

He wakes again at eleven when Bobby's old Camaro turns over in the yard outside. He scrubs a hand over his face, disoriented. The rumble of the engine moves off into the distance and he sits up, abruptly afraid, but he hasn't been left alone. Dean's sitting at the kitchen table, laptop open. He glances up and catches Sam's eyes, briefly, but there's no real expression on his face.

He changes into fresh clothes, gathers up his bag. When he actually comes in to the kitchen, he sees that Dean hasn't even changed, is kicked back with a glass of whiskey in hand, clicking idly around the screen.

"Uh, you want some coffee with that?" Sam says, raising his eyebrows.

Dean shrugs. "It's six o'clock somewhere," he says, and takes a gulp.

Sam shakes his head, but lets it go. "Is Bobby going ahead?" Dean frowns. "You have the car ready, right? We've got to hit the road if we're going to get Cas to the lab by 3:59 a.m."

That gets him a sigh and he slackens his hold on his bag, lets it drop to his feet. "Sam," Dean starts, but he stops and rolls the glass in his fingers. "It's not going to happen. We can't bring the horse to water, we can't make it drink. Why bother trying?"

"Dean—"

"No, seriously," Dean says, and there's a tremor of anger in his voice, at least, better than the flat disappointment of before. He looks up at Sam and shrugs. "He's gone. There's no Cas there anymore. There's no one to negotiate with, no one to trick. He's not broken, he's... someone else."

Sam's hands flex. It pulls at the stitches in his palm and he covers the bandage with his other hand, tries not to show too much of a reaction. "He's got to be in there somewhere, Dean."

The corner of Dean's mouth pulls up in a smirk. His eyes, on Sam, aren't friendly. "Oh, yeah? And you know that how?"

"I—I don't," Sam says, and Dean nods, like _No shit, Sam_. "But, look, I was pretty far gone sometimes, too, and you never gave up on me."

Dean looks down into his glass, at the half-inch of whiskey left. Sam thinks, but doesn't say, _Even when I leave you behind, after all those punches and all that blood spilled, every time, you've let me come back home._ He knows Dean from top to toes, understands his brother better than anyone else alive, and even so he can't quite grasp the depth of Dean's forgiveness. He remembers running away, that time in Flagstaff when he was fourteen, and how John had barely spoken to him when they found him but Dean had been absolutely silent, had refused to answer when Sam asked how he'd gotten the split lip, but let Sam fall asleep in the backseat with his head pillowed on Dean's shoulder all the same. He understands, now, what he didn't then: that, for supposedly faithless Dean, some things mattered more than religion. He wishes he felt more guilty but, if he's honest, it's something he relies on—being the focus of all that hopeless devotion gives his life a little needed gravity. Even when he betrays that fidelity he knows he has somewhere to come back to, though he might have to weather a righteously furious storm.

He watches his brother as he takes a slow breath, then drinks off the last of the whiskey. He refocuses on the laptop, eyes dry and mouth hard, and Sam wonders how long it will be before this bout of anger ceases to sustain Dean and he realizes there's an angel-shaped hole at his left hand.

"No, I didn't," Dean says, finally, "but you're different."

_Not really_ , Sam thinks, but then Dean's frowning at the laptop, and he says, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," and Sam comes around to stand at his shoulder and watch as Castiel smiles up a security camera, blood streaking over his lip and people about to die all around him, and Sam clenches his hands and thinks, _I'm really, really not_.

 

 

Sam has to practically carry Castiel into the lab. Bobby's walking just behind them, covering their backs just in case someone (or –thing) has holed up in Crowley's old hideout. Dean's out ahead, moving fast and brutally efficient, checking each hallway and room they pass and barely glancing back to make sure they're keeping up. Sam glances down at Castiel's bent head, his matted hair. He's got one arm slung around the vessel's shoulders and the trenchcoat is soaked through with blood and some kind of strange black ooze. Even on the drive here, Bobby helping to keep him propped up in the backseat of the Impala, he's gotten worse, his skin looking like any moment it'll perforate in a dozen places. Sam knows the feeling.

He settles Castiel on the floor while Bobby and Dean scramble to set up. It's already 3:45, not much time left. Castiel's panting, fumbling over words in a way that's making Sam's throat tight. "We need the right blood," Castiel's saying, and he sounds nothing like the god he'd been two days ago. "There's a small jar. End of the hall, s-supply closet."

"I've got it," says Sam, and Castiel slumps backwards. His eyes go right to Dean where he's clearing a space on the wall, back rigid, and Sam can't bear the look on his face. He's seen it too often in the mirror.

The hallway is all rough stone, damp from where the rain has gotten in, the corners full of wet leaves. The old asylum's lights aren't functioning this far in and he walks the path Castiel described by moonlight, following the misshapen squares on the floor. The supply closet is overgrown with moss and mildew, green fuzz and rust climbing the old iron shelves. Everything in the room looks abandoned, covered in decades of dust, but he barely has to look before he sees the jar, different only because it's clean. It's small, in his hand, half the blood gone from the first ritual. He turns around, hoping there's enough for one more desperate play, and then Lucifer says, "Hey, Sam. Enjoying today's game?"

Sam rears back. It's a miracle he doesn't drop the jar.

Lucifer looks just the same, hair shining blond in the cold light, eyes kind and blue. The vessel is standing in the doorway, hands tucked neatly into the pockets of his jeans, white shirt spotless and rolled up lean forearms. Just behind his right shoulder stands Michael, and it's still that young version of their dad, dark and unsmiling.

"Long time no see," Lucifer says, with a little grin, and then cocks his head. Sam backs up as far as he can, jarring his hip on a metal medical table. "Well, that's not quite right, is it?"

The look on his face—Sam shakes his head hard, squeezes his eyes closed. "You're not here," he says, clutching the jar against his chest. It's hard and cold, solid. "You're in Hell, in the cage. Both of you."

Michael snorts. Lucifer says, "That's true, Sam, very good."

Sam sucks in a breath, blows out through his mouth, trying to calm down. "What I've been—the things I've seen, what I feel," he says, and opens his eyes to Lucifer's calm smile. "They're not real. I know what's going on."

"What's going on?" Lucifer says.

"My mind's just—scrambled." He looks back and forth between them, shaking his head. "The things from the cage are leaking through to my real life, that's all. The last six months, the last few weeks, it's all just leakage. It's not real."

Lucifer glances at Michael, who shrugs. "Well, that's a tack he hasn't tried before," Michael murmurs, into Lucifer's ear, and Sam swallows, the metal table biting into his hip. "Not that he ever tried to get away much, did he."

"No," Lucifer says, "but then there really wasn't anywhere to escape to, was there, Sam? What makes you think anything’s changed?"

Sam's stomach turns over. "What?"

Lucifer's smile widens. He shifts his weight, leans up against the edge of the narrow stone doorway. Michael folds his arms over his chest, doesn't lift his gaze from Sam for a second. Cold stone, the angels' eyes on him—the memories are crowding in, so thick that no matter how much he wants to keep them out Sam's sure he's only seconds from being stripped naked, strapped down.

"Sam, we've been through this before," Lucifer says, and he almost sounds—disappointed. "Think back. Those little worlds I'd build for you? Don't you recognize quality craftsmanship when you see it?"

He gestures at the dim room around them. Sam shakes his head, helpless, but the memory is here: stone all around him, metal against his skin, Lucifer light and Michael dark and he knows if he closes his eyes it'll be an endless field of empty black, no one to call out to for help. More than that, though, he remembers all the times he'd wake up out of a scene so luscious with detail that even Lucifer's knives in his skin would seem pale in comparison, remembers how he'd have no idea that what he was seeing wasn't real until after, when he was curling bereft into Lucifer's arms. He raises his eyes from the floor, bile rising up the back of his throat, to find Lucifer tilting his head, watching.

"There it is," Lucifer says, pointing at Sam. "You get it now."

"No," Sam says, and it's a whisper but he can't care. "I don't believe you. Dean got me out, he went to Death—"

He blinks and Lucifer's suddenly close enough that Sam can see every detail of his face. He puts his hands on Sam's hips and Sam's shoved up to sit on the metal table, Lucifer standing between his knees and planting his hands next to Sam's thighs, just like he used to when—Sam pulls back, slams his head against the stone wall so hard his vision blurs.

"Sweetheart, please, this is embarrassing," Lucifer says, and Sam blinks away tears. Michael's standing still, over Lucifer's shoulder, looking amused. "I told you I could make anything I wanted, using your head. This was just... trying to see how far your imagination could be stretched. I wanted to see what you’d do when you thought you didn’t have a soul, wanted to see what you'd do once you thought you were put back together again. And, by the way, the things you've done to your brother—I'm impressed, Sam, I really am."

"None of it's real," Sam says. Even to his own ears he sounds like he's pleading.

Lucifer's hands close over his wrists. "In a sense, you're right," he says, thoughtful. "We're not in the real world and so we can do whatever we want, right?" The last is tossed over his shoulder at Michael, who nods. "So we can burn you down and carve you up and give you everything you want and then take it away again. Easy. You're still in the cage with us, Sam, it's just that we've gotten bored watching and we want to play, too."

He lets go of Sam's wrists and takes a step back, then another, and Sam squeezes his eyes closed and—there it is, the dark, and he claps his hands over his ears so he doesn't have to hear all that ringing silence and yet there's a voice in his head, saying his name, and he about collapses to the floor when hands curl around his wrists.

"Sam!" he hears again. It's Dean's voice. He forces his eyes open and Dean's holding on to him, looking up at him with eyes wide and scared. His fingers are biting into Sam's forearms, deep enough that Sam wonders if he'll have bruises, and when Dean lets go so he can slide down off the table the blood throbs under his skin and he thinks, _This must be real_. Dean's standing close, searching his face, and his grip has shifted to Sam's jacket, knuckles glancing over his chest, and Sam takes a deep breath and shakes his head. It must be.

"Come on, we've got to get out of here," Dean's saying, and Bobby's over his shoulder looking at Sam like he's about to reach for his gun. Sam looks down at his hands, finds them empty and the jar of blood gone, and he has no idea where it went.

"Hey, look at me," Dean says. His hand flattens over Sam's chest and when Sam looks up his eyebrows are high, his lips pale. "We've got to get out of here, we've got to follow Cas. Come with me, Sam, all right?"

"Yeah," Sam breathes out, puts one foot in front of the other, and moves into the bright white light of morning with Dean's hand spread on his back, seeping warmth into his skin.

 

The rest of the day passes as though on fast-forward. He remembers watching Dean pull the sodden trenchcoat out of the water, folding it into a careful square and not crying, but close. There's a confused impression of driving, staring blindly out the window at the highway and the fields and towns rolling past them. Dean and Bobby aren't talking, in the front seat. Sam digs his fingernails into leather and tries to feel himself anchored, wholly, in these details he knows from a lifetime's experience, but—

Bobby has to practically pull him out of the backseat, when they get back to the house. A hand circles his wrist, fingers warm against his pulse, and he blinks to see Dean looking up at him again, urging him forward. He winds up in the living room before he quite realizes what has happened. He showers, changes into clean clothes Dean presses into his hands. His skull feels too tight, headache so bad his teeth ache, and he makes his way back downstairs with his eyes closed, Dean at his side making sure he doesn't fall, and when he slumps back onto the couch the last impression he has of wakefulness is Dean's sure hands on him, helping to get his legs onto the couch, easing his shoulders down, and, at last, combing through the hair at his temple and tucking it, careful, behind his ear.

 

It's dark. He strains his eyes but there's nothing, no heat or light or air. No time, either, and he curls in on himself, wonders how long it will be. Wonders what he'll be given when the light comes back. Suspended in cold black solitude, again, and he could try to dream himself elsewhere, but what's the point?

A little stretch of forever passes. He waits, empty. Perhaps they'll let him have Dean again, for a while, or perhaps Lucifer will rework him, train him to crave pain again. He doesn't know which is worse—shuddering under the razors, yearning for Lucifer's praise, or thinking he'll wake up beside his brother and finding him, suddenly, gone. It's almost enough to make him want to stay in the dark. Almost.

After what seems like centuries, all that blank nothing shudders. _Sam_ , he hears, and he picks up his head, can't place the voice. _Come on, Sam,_ and it sounds like Lucifer, or maybe Michael, but then he hears _, Sammy,_ and he opens his eyes to blinding light and hears, "Sammy," and Dean's half-crouched in front of him, a hand on his chest, and he's on the couch in Bobby's house, and he thinks _, They can't hurt you_ , and he grabs Dean by the biceps and hauls him down into his arms.

Dean overbalances, of course, lands on one knee and drops his weight into Sam's chest with a muffled, "Christ, Sam," up against Sam's throat. He's warm, solid, and after a second his hands come up to Sam's shoulders. Sam squeezes his eyes shut tight and buries his face in the soft short hair, the faint smell of their mint shampoo.

"Well, this is adorable," Lucifer says, off to the left, and Sam takes a deep breath, relaxes his grip.

After a second or two Dean pulls back, slow, his hands lingering on Sam's shoulders. He's frowning, a little, searching Sam's face, and Sam doesn't know what he finds there but it makes him shift back onto his heels.

"You slept for twelve hours, thought I'd call that rested," Dean says, after a moment. Sam shifts up into a sitting position and Dean looks up at him, takes a deep breath like he's going to say something—then stands, hands Sam a bottle of water and a protein bar.

"Breakfast?" Sam says, trying on a smile, and Dean shrugs.

With Sam's legs out of the way there's plenty of room on the couch, but Dean sits right next to him. "Let me see your hand," he says, and Sam lets him take it, watches him uncurl Sam's fingers away from the dirty bandage, seemingly unaware or not caring that their knees are touching.

Lucifer says, "I swear, Sam, if you were any more obvious you'd be drooling," and Sam drags his eyes away from Dean's focused expression to find Lucifer straddling a chair a few feet away, chin resting on his arms folded over the back. Michael's leaned up against Bobby's desk, giving Lucifer a fond look, and Sam looks away just in time to meet Dean's eyes when he finishes his brief exam of the stitches.

"Think you'll live," Dean says, and stands. He takes the two steps over to the desk to grab a clean rag and a bottle of whiskey—Michael obligingly cocks his hip out of the way, which Dean doesn't appear to notice—and then takes Sam's hand back in a firm hold while he splashes the alcohol over the mostly-healed wound.

It stings something awful, but it's not like Sam's not used to Winchester first aid. He lets Dean clamp the rag over his hand, flexing his fingers against the restraining grip.

"Where's Bobby?" he says, as Dean finishes wiping the whiskey away.

"Getting his feelers out on the whole—black goo mess." Dean shrugs. He pulls a ball of gauze out of his shirt pocket and starts rewrapping Sam's hand, fingers deft and sure. "Don't know what he's telling people to look out for, but we haven't heard anything about giant Mothra versus Godzilla battles in Nebraska, so."

His eyes are steady on Sam's hand. Sam watches him. When he finishes, tucking in the last corner of gauze, he lets go and his own hands land in his lap, fingers curling loosely together.

"Sam, we've got a problem," he says, after a moment. He leans forward a little, rests his elbows on his knees. "You need to talk to me, man."

Lucifer chuckles. "That's not all he needs to do to you."

Sam ignores that. "I know," he says, and Dean glances up at him, startled, like he thought Sam would protest.

"What happened back there?" Now Dean really is looking at him, searching, and Sam pushes back a little more into the corner of the couch. He wants to turn away, but there's nowhere else to go. He has no idea what to say, how to explain. How much to explain. "Is it—are you hallucinating, like Death said?"

Michael shifts his weight off the desk, moves across the room to stand just behind Lucifer. Sam tracks the movement, looks at Lucifer's smile, and wonders how much of the truth to tell, whether lying more would hurt his brother less.

"Sort of. It's more like I'm... going down the holes." Dean's starting to frown, not quite understanding. Sam weighs the next sentence on his tongue. Hopes it won't give too much away. "I think maybe I have been for a while now. But now it's getting worse."

"Worse how?" Dean says, and he sounds frustrated, at last, instead of sounding like he's worried Sam will shatter if he pushes too hard. Sam isn't sure the worry's not valid. "Sam."

"It's Lucifer," Sam blurts. Dean's mouth half-opens, but Sam's giving up, now, can't afford to hesitate. "I mean, it's really him. I saw him. And Michael, too, at the lab. I went into the supply closet to get the blood and they were there, like they were waiting for me. Lucifer wouldn't let me leave."

"But—" Dean's jaw works. "You—the blood was there, on the floor in the hallway, you must've put it there."

"Whoops." Lucifer grimaces. "Plot hole."

Dean's looking at him like—it's an expression Sam's put there once or twice, but it's worse this time, Dean's face like a promise broken, like this is the last worst thing. Sam closes his eyes against it. "I don't remember," he says. "Dean, I don't remember a lot of things. I'm having a hard time here, man. It's hard to tell what's real anymore."

"How do you mean?"

Dean's voice is low. Sam takes a deep breath. Dean's knee is still barely touching his and he focuses on that tiny pressure, the bit of warmth. He keeps his eyes closed, doesn't want to see Dean's reaction to this.

"I think—he said I'm still there. The cage. It's one of the things he does, you know? Used to do, I mean," he says, clearing his throat. "He could make a whole world, make me believe everything in it, and he'd let me walk around, think it was real, until he took it away. Happened kind of a lot. So... now I guess I'm kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop."

When Sam opens his eyes again, several seconds later, Dean's got his face covered with one hand, leaning forward like he's ill. "Jesus," he finally says, and scrapes the hand down, fingers rasping against his stubble.

"Yeah," Sam says.

Dean glances at him, then pushes up to his feet, grabs the bottle of whiskey back off the table. He pours out a big slug into a handy glass and takes a gulp, then pauses, shrugs, and takes a pull straight off the bottle. Sam looks away. Cups his newly bandaged hand in the palm of his whole one. Lucifer's leaning back into Michael's leg, now, and they're both watching Dean—Michael with a dark sort of satisfaction, like seeing Dean in pain is comeuppance for the cage's confinement. Sam doesn't know why; at least Michael isn't alone.

"Hang on, that doesn't make sense," Dean says. When Sam looks up he's got a refilled glass in one hand, the other curled tight enough around the lip of the desk that the knuckles are yellow. "If the devil likes to make you believe in these little worlds, why would he let you figure out that this one's not real? What's the point of that?"

"He said he wanted to see what I'll do," Sam says, and when he glances over Lucifer's giving him two thumbs up, nodding. "He wants to see what I'd do if I knew there weren't any consequences, if I knew I was just gonna wake up in the cage again after he took it away."

Dean rubs his hand over his mouth. He looks down at the whiskey, then abandons the glass onto the desk, undrunk. "But why would he make something like this?" he says, gesturing at the book-scattered mess around them, the stains and regret and empty rooms. "I mean, why not make you something better, something you wanted?"

"Oh, how little he knows me," Lucifer says, and Sam looks over, can't help it. Lucifer leans forward, cocks an eyebrow at Dean. "You ought to tell him how very good I am at that. Or do you think big brother might not be ready for the adult content? You always used to do whatever you wanted, Sam, don't let him stop you now."

Sam's eyes go hot and wet, the memories flashing bright at the back of his mind.

"Sam?" When Sam looks back Dean's slightly blurry. He blinks to find his brother all tense worry. "Are you seeing him right now?"

There's no point in lying. He nods, wordless, a lump in his throat.

"He's not real," Dean says, low and urgent. "You know that, right?"

Lucifer looks offended. Sam swallows. "He says the same thing about you," he says, and Dean looks like he's been punched. Sam recognizes that expression, too, the look Dean gets when he thinks he's failed someone. "I'm sorry," he says, but it only makes Dean lean back against the desk, put his face in his hands.

After a few moments, Dean says, "You've got nothing to be sorry for. Don't apologize." He lets his hands drop. For a second it looks as though he's working himself up to say something. Instead he stays quiet, giving Sam a long, thorough look. He finally turns away when, outside, the silence is broken by the sound of tires on gravel, the heavy rumble of Bobby's Camaro. "We've got to tell him, Sam, so don't go thinking you can keep this to yourself."

"No, I know," Sam says, but Dean continues as though he hadn't spoken.

"We'll think of something, some way to convince you," Dean says, and then takes a gulp of the forgotten whiskey. "The real world may suck, but it's the only one we've got and I intend to keep you in it. No matter what it takes."

He slants a look over his shoulder, halfway to a glare. "Okay," Sam says, because some response seems to be required. Dean doesn't relax, but he does put down the glass, and when Bobby calls out a greeting he goes to meet him at the kitchen door, ushers him back outside with a low word. Michael starts leafing through Bobby's notes on banishing angels and Lucifer walks into the kitchen, clearly tries to eavesdrop through the half-closed door. "Okay," Sam says again, and wonders if Dean's belief is going to be strong enough to carry both of them, this time.

 

Dean hovers. It's similar to the few times Sam can remember being sick, as a kid, though at least this time Dean isn't trying to force-feed him orange juice and too-spicy stew. Ostensibly, they're all locked down in the house trying to come up with any way to find or hunt or at least inconvenience the Leviathan, but with the utter lack of useful information to hand it's obvious that, really, neither Dean nor Bobby know what to do.

The day passes slowly, the evening even more so. Sam sticks to his spot on the couch, reading, but not absorbing much. The television stays on, muted, and he will occasionally glance up to catch whatever headlines are working their way around the crawl and see Dean and Bobby having a quiet conversation in the kitchen. Most of the time he'll catch one of them looking at him. Bobby will glance away, and Sam doesn't blame him, but Dean doesn't even flinch—if Sam looks up Dean will hold his eyes, flick a look over the tense lines of Sam's body where he's angled onto the couch. Like he's trying to satisfy himself that, yes, so far Sam is healthy, whole.

"Uh, I don't think so, Sam," Lucifer says, and Sam takes a deep breath. Right now the two of them are sitting at Bobby's desk—Michael at ease in the old chair, Lucifer sitting on the scarred wooden top and letting his weight rest on his elbow, perched on a pile of books.

Michael kicks his feet up onto the desk. "This isn't the most entertaining you've ever been, I have to say."

_Then end it_ , Sam thinks, and then Dean walks up to him with a beer and he turns his eyes away from the archangels, smiles as best he can in gratitude. Dean sits right next to him with a bottle of his own and fixes his gaze on the television. They don't talk, but Sam can feel himself relaxing a little more into the couch nevertheless.

 

His eyes fly open. He has no idea how long it's been. He twists around, quick, but Dean's gone, Bobby in the kitchen running water in the sink, and Sam turns back over, presses his forehead into the back of the couch. The things he dreams about—they leave his skin tight, his blood overheated, expanding up to the surface and beating slow and heavy as black, liquid tar. He opens his eyes into the stained upholstery and the heated curve of a muscled shoulder still buzzes under his mouth, salt-sweat and bitter under his tongue, his hands still shaped around narrow hips and strained breath coming damp and fast in his ear. He thanks God he's not a teenager anymore, because this could be the worst possible time to have to explain an unexpected reaction. Even so, it's hard to turn over when, behind him, Bobby says, "Sam?" and to accept a cup of coffee without even a flinch.

"Thanks," he manages, after the first too-hot gulp. Bobby shrugs, gives him one of those little half-smiles. Lucifer and Michael aren't in the room at this very second and so he takes the opportunity he's given. "I need to talk, Bobby."

He looks surprised, for a second, then says, "Sure thing, kid." He cocks his head at Sam. "Come on, I've got some stuff in the basement I'm trying to sort out. Maybe you can give me a hand."

Sam follows him down the stairs, ducking automatically so as not to hit his head on the low ceiling. "Where's Dean?"

"Oh, he's out working on that damn car." Sam can hear the eye-roll. "An idiot could tell the thing's looked better this week than it ever did when it was new. Didn't your daddy ever teach you two not to try to fix what ain't broke?"

It's rhetorical. Sam thinks, anyway, _Of course he didn't_. Fixing things is Dean's whole way of life. What isn't broken, Sam remembers from many an afternoon of Dean stretched out under the Impala, can be improved.

Bobby's basement is a mess, of course, and he sets Sam to sorting out the ritual herbs, trying to figure out what they've run out of, what they might soon need to use. It's a distraction, obviously meant to smooth the conversation, and Sam's grateful for it. He likes it down here, anyway. It's cool, dim, and as he opens poorly-labeled packets and unscrews dusty jars the air fills with the smell of verbena, rosemary, hazel.

Over to the right, Bobby's doing something with a stack of books and loose parchment, cursing a little as dirt spills off them. "Guess I should've gotten to this a little sooner," he says.

After that, they're quiet. Sam doesn't know how to start, and Bobby isn't helping, seems content to wait. In the little notebook Bobby left him, Sam writes _need more jezebel root_ , then taps the pen against the side of the table. He takes a deep breath.

"You know," Bobby says. Sam glances up. He's sorting the parchment into three stacks, shaking them to get rid of the layers of dust and glancing over the spidery writing on them quickly before assigning them their new place. "I was thinking about that winter your daddy dropped you here. Two weeks or so, right after Christmas."

Sam leans his hip against the table. He watches Bobby blow dust off a fragile-looking book, turned slightly away. He's free to look, taking in Bobby solid and calm, capable as he's always seemed through all of Sam's life.

"You probably don't remember that, of course. Couldn't have been more than about five. Dean was just about to turn ten and kept bitching up a storm about how he could've watched you just fine, that the two of you didn't need any babysitting." While Sam watches, Bobby flips through the first few pages of the book, then shrugs and drops it into the furthest pile. Discards, looks like. "Kid's been a fool his whole life, though you don't need me to tell you that."

"I'm surprised you didn't just knock him out for the two weeks," Sam says, after a moment.

Bobby glances at him. "Don't think I wasn't tempted." He shrugs, then, unfolding a long scroll. "Managed to get him under the hood of an old Pontiac I was trying to fix up. Even that didn't shut him up until I promised to let you sit out in the garage with him. Of course, I couldn't let you both sit out there alone, no matter how much Dean thought he knew what he was doing. Ended up with me trying to translate a bunch of exorcisms and keep an eye on your brother while you sat there and played with a toy car you'd scrounged up from who-knows-where. About froze our asses off, too."

Sam doesn't remember it, really, but he does remember the car. A little red Mustang, scratched up, played with so much the passenger door had broken off and he could fit his finger in across the tiny plastic front seat. He assumes it had been Dean's, handed down to him as everything else was, and he'd kept it in his pocket when he was little, stroking the smooth metal curves of it when he was scared or nervous. He doesn't know what happened to it, in the end—lost in a motel, probably, or left behind in an abrupt flight out of a nameless town—but his hand curls around the remembered shape of it even now.

"I think that was the first car your brother ever fixed by himself, now that I think about it," Bobby's saying when Sam resurfaces. "Got so covered with grease I had to make him take three baths before he even looked like himself. Cut his hand up, too. Not bad, just needed a stitch or two, but lord if you didn't pitch a fit. Cried and cried until he showed you he wasn't bleeding no more." There's a few seconds of silence, and then Bobby shakes his head, huffs out a short laugh. "Don't know what made me think of that."

Sam turns back to the herbs. He looks down at the tangled-up mess of vervain, the dusty-soft leaves of sage and camphor, and presses his palms flat on the table. He takes a breath and then says, "Why didn't you tell me about the wall?" The rustling of pages goes still.

It isn't something they've talked about. Sam doesn't even remember waking up that day, not really—there's a confused impression of Castiel pitiless, of Dean staring at him dumbfounded, of rain. Dean's explanation of his deal with Death had come that night and Sam had tried to fit in the knowledge with the crashed-together jumble of memories, but it still makes little sense.

After another few seconds, Bobby sighs. "I wanted to." Sam looks over. He's still got his eyes on the books, but has given up the pretense of sorting them. "Dean insisted we couldn't say, couldn't let anything crack it. I knew it wouldn't last, but you know how stubborn he is. Swore we couldn't let you know anything was wrong, no matter what. Took you out of here on that hunt in Portland and—well, you know the rest. Still don't know how he kept it from you so long, but I guess it worked."

He's skirting dangerous territory here. "It's just—" he starts, and swallows, shakes his head. Bobby's watching him carefully. "I can't really remember everything. You'd tell me, right, if I—did something, then?"

"Like what?" Bobby says, eyes narrowing a little.

Sam pauses, briefly paralyzed. "What's the matter, Sam?" he hears, and Lucifer steps up behind Bobby, arms folded over his chest. He raises his eyebrows. "Getting a little confused?"

Bobby's frowning, now, and Sam shrugs. "I don't know," he says, and tries a smile. It doesn't feel like it goes well. "Just not too sure what's in my head and what, you know, actually happened."

For some reason, that makes Bobby relax. "Well, kid, I ain't exactly the number one person to ask. It's your brother who was with you the whole time. Anything you're not sure about, you should go to him."

"Yeah, definitely go to him," Lucifer says, with a grin.

Sam echoes, "Yeah," and tries not to jump when above them the kitchen door slams open and Dean's voice calls out, "Hey, did anyone order lunch?"

Bobby gives him a one-sided smile and goes to climb the stairs, and Lucifer leans easily out of his way to let him pass. "I wish you'd stop nitpicking at the details, Sam, it's very hurtful," he says, when Bobby makes it back to the ground floor. "Why don't you just let it happen? You used to love my little games."

"Sam!" Dean calls.

Lucifer's smiling at him, and without turning Sam knows that Michael's standing at his back. "Just end it," Sam says. He doesn't care how much it sounds like pleading.

"Don't think so," Lucifer says, and Sam closes his eyes. "It begins and ends with you, sweetheart. It ends when you figure it out. Not one second before."

 

Dinner is awkward. The after-dinner beers more so. Dean's clearly watching Sam for any sign of further psychosis, and Sam is trying his best not to indicate or even acknowledge that on the couch on either side of him sit two men. They watch the news, instead, Dean straddling a desk chair and looking at Sam half the time when he should be watching the screen. For his part, Bobby washes his hands of the whole situation and works the phones on a complicated con for a hunter Sam's body met while it was soulless, but who Sam doesn't really remember. Around midnight, the hunter's case is resolved and Bobby hauls himself up the stairs to bed. By one o'clock, Dean gives up any pretense and spreads out on his stomach, curled over a pillow six inches away from the couch. He's asleep in minutes. Sam stares up at the ceiling, on his back on the sagging cushions, and wonders whether it's worth easing this bone-deep exhaustion if it means he'll have to risk dreaming.

"I don't see the problem here," Lucifer says. When Sam turns his head, he's crouched just on the other side of Dean, close enough that Sam could reach out and touch them both. "You can do anything. Go back to school. Drive off a cliff. You're free here, Sam, don't you get it? No responsibility, no law. Really, in a way, this is a gift."

Michael nods. He walks soft-footed over the rug and when he arrives at their side Lucifer leans a shoulder into his leg—solid, steady, an older brother taking care of the younger and making out of himself a safe place.

"Stop," Sam whispers, looking down at Dean. He shifts a little, but doesn't wake up. "You're not going to get to me, so stop trying."

"Well, I think we all know that's not true." Lucifer leans a little more into Michael's supporting thigh, looking at Sam with something like compassion. "What's the hang-up? You want—well, we know what you want," he says, and puts a hand on the small of Dean's back. Proprietary, and it makes Sam's stomach roil, but Dean doesn't react. "He wants it, too. Trust me. Have you not seen his face?"

Sam wants to shove the hand off, wants to fight back in a way he never bothered to try, wants to tear both of them down to the ground, but it'd only wake Dean, would bring questions he'd have to lie to answer. "It's not real," he responds, at last. Even to his own ears he sounds like a broken record.

"But Sam, that's the beauty of it," Lucifer says, leaning forward."It doesn't matter. He wants what I say he wants. And for you, my Sam—" He reaches out and Sam closes his eyes, but a dry, cool touch ghosts over his jaw all the same, over the slant of his cheekbone, curling over to push his hair back from his brow. "I'd do anything," comes the whisper, up against the shell of his ear, and it sounds familiar, like it should be triggering some kind of memory, but behind Sam's eyelids it's dark and quiet, even if it isn't safe, and he slips away to sleep before he can place it.

 

It's late afternoon and Sam is alone in Bobby's house. Dean's gone, off on a scouting mission, and Bobby's checking up on something at the hospital in town, and Sam's—alone. Really, this time, in a way he hasn't been since... before he can remember. It feels strange.

The rooms in Bobby's house are familiar, yet somehow not. He's used to eyes on him when he's here, used to always having a task, research or homework or training or chores.  Now, he's walking through these rooms and he feels like an intruder, a stranger in one of the few places that's ever felt like home. There's nowhere else to go, though, and it's not like he can leave even if there were. With no one else here he's noticing for the first time how very quiet it is. Peaceful. For a while, he stands in the kitchen doorway and watches the light slanting over the garage go dark gold with the dwindling day, the dust in the yard turning to a burnt orange and the shadows under the cars deep and black, and he understands how someone could shut themselves away here. When he was younger he'd loved bustling spaces, big cities. Dean thinks his running off to college was only about independence, being normal, and that was part of it, sure. He'd also wanted, simply, more. The world, his world, revolved for so long around two men, and he'd thought sometimes he'd go crazy with it. Now, he thinks back to that night standing in front of a ramshackle house, barely eighteen and shaking with everything that had happened and that was about to, and thinks that if he could do it all again—

A deep rumble of an engine interrupts him and he jerks his head up. It's dark, now, and he shakes his head at himself for  falling into a reverie. He turns around and Bobby's house is dim, the kitchen shadowed enough that he can barely see when Dean unlocks the front door.

"You're back," he says, inanely, and isn't surprised by the way he feels his shoulders relax, something easing in his gut.

Dean glances at him as he digs into the fridge for a beer. "Yeah, Sam," he says, and the tone's just right, that _my little brother is a moron_ note that's followed Sam his whole life. Impossibly, Sam feels himself start to grin, and it's lucky Dean's taking long gulps from the can of Pabst because otherwise he's sure he'd be getting a once-over for crazy.

He looks—like nothing but himself, and the strange lassitude of the afternoon stays with Sam as he leans a hip against the kitchen table, drinks his fill. Dean's wearing that soft grey jacket they got at a thrift store in Denver, worn-pale jeans, stubble looking darker than usual in the dim light. When he pulls the can away and rubs the back of his hand over his mouth, his lower lip still gleams wet, even as he catches Sam looking and says, "What?"

"Did you find the Leviathan?" Sam says, after a second.

Dean's mouth firms and he puts the can down. "Yeah, and I think there's more—a lot more than two, is my guess. Followed them back to South Dakota."

That penetrates the fog, a little, and Sam straightens up. "What, to here? Did you call Bobby?"

"He's working his own case, right? He's fine, but we've got to get out of here. I don't care that you're—uh, having problems," Dean says, a little awkward, and Sam looks down at the beer he's rolling between his palms. "I'm taking you with, Sam, and that's final."

He hadn't planned on arguing. In minutes they're in the Impala, ever-ready bags loaded into the trunk. Sam holds on while Dean peels out, gravel spraying behind them in their sudden hurry, and then there's nothing to do but lean into the corner of the seat and watch Dean drive. He runs his tongue along the backs of his teeth, trying to get the beer taste out, and doesn't wonder where they're going until they're twenty miles along the road, pulling into a motel Sam doesn't recognize.

"Already got us a room," Dean says, as they climb out of the car, and his voice is a little rough. Enough to make Sam swallow. "Come on, we can unpack later. I want to get a look at something."

The parking lot's almost empty. He follows Dean to the door of room seven, waits while he unlocks it. When they get inside, it's dim, cool, only the light in the bathroom on and spilling white over the single king bed.

"Um," Sam says, mouth suddenly dry, and then Dean's standing close, enough that he has to tilt his head back a little to look into Sam's eyes.

"It's okay, Sammy," he says. "I'm not going anywhere."

Sam should step back, to the door. Should ask what that means. He stares down, instead, and when Dean's fingers reach out and close around his wrist he could almost collapse, right there, fall down to his knees and never get up again.

Dean's thumb strokes over the straining tendon, up against his pulse. "You remember when you were sixteen and had your first date with Mindy Bourne?" Sam blinks. He doesn't remember telling Dean that story, had been too embarrassed that it'd taken him so long. Dean's mouth curls a little and he drops his eyes to Sam's chest, brings his other hand up to the lapel of his jacket. "She was cute. Great legs. Couldn't help but think, though, she wasn't quite up to the standard. You know what I mean?"

Sam tries to take a breath. "Shouldn't we be trying to track the Leviathan?" His voice isn't even close to steady.

He gets a little shrug. "They'll keep." He tugs Sam forward by the jacket and rotates them, taking two steps and pushing until Sam's legs hit the bed. A little shove has him sitting on the edge of the mattress, his breath coming strange and heavy. Dean takes a gun out of the back of his pants, drops it on the bed next to Sam's hand. "We're safe for now, we don't have to always be running off on a hunt."

Sam frowns. "You don't want to hunt them?"

Dean reaches out and puts a hand on Sam's shoulder. It'd be normal, brotherly, but for the fact that he takes a step closer to do it, ends up standing almost between Sam's knees. He says, "Not right this second, Sam, no," and it's soft, a little mocking, and Sam feels like he has to retort, has to say anything, but his head is for a moment entirely empty. Dean leans forward a little, his other hand landing on the curve of muscle where Sam's shoulder meets his neck, and he says, "Don't you get tired of having to follow the rules all the time? Why can't we just..."

He leans in a little more, and Sam starts to pull back but freezes, because Dean's put one knee on the bed next to Sam's hip, and then the other, and then he's sitting astride Sam's thighs, warm and heavy and still gripping Sam's shoulders, and he's wearing a little smile, curving lips bitten almost-red. Sam slides his hands onto his waist and thinks _this is a gift_ , and then the motel room door opens and he hears Dean's voice say, "Sam?" and he's sitting on the concrete floor of a half-destroyed warehouse, moonlight streaming in the broken windows.

He scrambles to his feet. It feels like there's no air. Dean's walking toward him, frowning, but on either side of him walk two men, one blond and one dark, and the bile is rising in Sam's throat and he can't—he can't—

"Sam, what are you doing?" Dean says, and Sam raises the gun and shoots Michael in the chest. The bullet passes through like smoke.

"Christ!" Dean says, freezing and throwing up both hands.

Lucifer gives Sam an appalled look and Michael appears beside him, unaffected. "We were only trying to give you what you want, Sam. I mean, would you rather be burning?"

The memory of that streaks across his skin and he tightens his grip on the gun, tries not to let them see it's shaking. "I was with you, Dean," he says, dragging his eyes away from Lucifer's little grin.

Dean's eyes are wide. He spreads his hands out, palms open. "I'm here," he says, "I'm here now," but Sam has to squeeze his eyes shut.

"I don't—" Hands on his jaw, at his waist, a thumb stroking over his cheekbone and a hand closing around his wrist. He jerks his head up and stares at Lucifer, at Michael over his shoulder, and when he meets Dean's eyes he knows he looks crazy but that's just the facts, isn't it. "You're always here," he says, and maybe it's giving too much away for how Dean's eyes narrow, but—"I don't know how to tell the difference."

Dean swallows and Lucifer appears at Sam's side, makes him jerk his gaze away. He leans in close, eyes on Dean, and says, "If you don't cooperate, Sam, we might have to bring in the big guns. Give Dean a little taste of your medicine, you remember that?" Sam does, of course, Dean's face bloodied and skin in shreds one of the thousands of things that keep him up at night, and he almost turns, almost capitulates, but then Dean's right in front of him.

"Okay, we're going to start small," he says, mouth firm and determined, and Sam could just pull him into a hug, could kiss him. "You don't know what's real, right?"

He snatches Sam's hand, quick as he's always been, and holds it palm up so Sam can see the bandage.

"I remember getting tortured," he says, and Sam nearly closes his eyes against the surge of black and red imagery. "I remember that it didn't feel—right, it wasn't the same. Like in a dream, right? How you might not bleed right, how maybe you'd just heal up in a second, how you could keep on living with all your skin off, with your heart taken out of your chest. The pain, it feels different than it does here."

He's still holding onto Sam's hand, willing him to understand. Sam shakes his head. "How can you know for sure?"

An expression flits over Dean's face too quick to decipher, but then his jaw firms and he digs his thumb into the meat of Sam's palm, right through the bandage into the half-healed cut. It—it _hurts_ , and Sam tries to drag his hand away but Dean's strong, holds on.

"Damn," Michael says, and flicks away. Lucifer's frowning.

"Sam," Dean says. His voice is raw. "This is real. I'm telling you. It's not Hell, it's not the cage, it's just normal, everyday pain. It's different, right, from what you remember?"

What Sam remembers—he looks down at the blood seeping up, through the gauze, and his fingers spasm without his direction. Dean's other hand sneaks out and takes the gun out of Sam's lax grip and he lets it go, looks back up into Dean's face.

"Sam, if you let this go, you'll never—" Lucifer starts, but Dean's grip tightens and he seems to flicker, almost, and looks down at himself in surprise.

"Hey, look at me," Dean says, and Sam blinks, tries to focus. "There aren't any more crappy worlds you've got to escape. There's just one, and I'm gonna keep you here. I got you out, Sammy," and his voice nearly breaks and Sam clings to that. "They can't hurt you anymore."

"Sammy," Lucifer says, and he reaches out for Sam's shoulder but he flinches away. Lucifer's hand closes on nothing. "You'll hurt yourself," Lucifer promises, and Sam twists his wrist, closes his hand around Dean's thumb and squeezes hard, feels the stitches pop and his palm get wet with blood. Lucifer blinks out, disappears.

"You've got to believe me," Dean says, and his voice is steady, thrums with certainty. "You know you can believe me. You make it stone number one and you build on it. Understand?"

The blood's dripping down to the floor. Sam looks down at their joined hands and sees Dean's fingers are wet and red, and the sting of his ripped-up palm is bringing tears to his eyes but he can't care. He's waiting for a voice in his ear, a hand on his wrist, but it doesn't come.

"Okay," Sam says, and looks up to see—his brother, and only that. He nods, and doesn't let go. "Yeah. Okay."

He's still in shock when Dean's phone rings. He disentangles their hands when he answers, says, "Hey, Bobby," like the world hasn't just shifted sideways. Sam stares down at the now-useless bandage, sliding it up to see his re-torn palm. Bizarre, that tearing yet another hole should make everything clearer. He feels wrenched loose from his moorings, like an anchor's been pulled up. The only stable thing left is standing right in front of him.

"You saw Leviathan here?" Dean says. When Sam looks up he's tense, but still watching Sam. "Bobby, if they knew you at the hospital, they might know—" He cuts himself off, listening, and when he nods Sam is fascinated anew by how he just switches gears, goes from frightened big brother to steel-jawed hunter in a bare second. Doesn't matter how many times he's seen it. "Okay. We'll meet you there."

"What's going on?" Sam tries to sound professional, is pretty sure he doesn't manage it.

"The Leviathan know who Bobby is. Not much of a stretch to think they might know us, too. We're getting out of here, meeting up at Rufus' cabin—can't risk them cornering us at the house."

"I brought our stuff," Sam offers. "I think."

Something in Dean's face softens for a second. "Okay." He looks up at Sam, searches his eyes. He must find what he's looking for, because he nods again, once, and then reaches out and circles Sam's wrist in a warm grip. "You're not going to run off on me again, right, Sammy?"

Sam fights not to flinch away. The cut is still throbbing with his pulse, so this Dean must be real. He must be. "I'm with you," he says, and watches one corner of Dean's mouth turn up in a little, relieved smile.

 

 

Whitefish, Montana, is a little over a thousand miles from Bobby's house, and the way most people drive that'd be a seventeen hour trip. Dean loads Sam into the passenger seat, throws the bags Sam took into the trunk, and pulls onto the highway at midnight. They hit Rapid City in four hours, make Billings by dawn. Sam falls asleep somewhere in the middle of the huge empty-skied span of Montana, curled into his corner of the bench. He doesn't remember his dreams. He wakes up again when the engine turns off and sits up fast, blinking around at the muddy clearing in front of the cabin. No sign of Bobby, or of Rufus, for that matter, and Sam's shoulders relax. He isn't quite ready for company. Beside him, Dean scrubs a hand over his face. Sam looks over to find his eyes red-rimmed, his mouth grim. It's been almost two days since he slept and Sam's gut twists.

"Hey, come on," he says, with a light smack to Dean's leg. It makes him toss a glare at Sam, but he gets out of the car.

Rufus' cabin is two stories of solid wood, built on a steep drop-off among the trees. Once Sam picks the lock they sweep the little building as quickly as they can, but there's no sign that Rufus has been here in years—dust rimes the old oak table, the salt lines still thick at the windows and the back door. There's a crowded little basement and a porch off the main room overlooking the steep hill into the woods. "Defensible," Dean says, standing just behind him, and Sam glances back to see him still holding his gun, straight-backed and steady.

"I guess," Sam says. He nudges Dean back into the main room and takes another second to look around. There's a little single bed tucked into the back wall, a squashy couch in front of a television that looks older than Dean—Dean, who's thankfully put his gun down on the battered coffee table, but who looks no less tense. "You want to take ten, man? I can keep a lookout for Bobby."

He turns his eyes away while Dean wrestles off his jacket, slides the hunting knife out of the top of his boot and places it at a precise angle next to his gun. After a moment, though, Dean says, "Are you okay?" and Sam turns back to find him still standing, giving Sam a careful, searching look.

Heat rises behind his eyes, as it's so prone to doing lately. He blinks, hard. "I'm all right," he says, trying to make it sound reassuring. Dean's regard is heavy and he tries out a smile. "Really, I'm not—seeing anything. Just you. Promise."

There's a long couple of seconds during which Dean's expression doesn't change, but he finally nods, once, and collapses backwards onto the sofa. "You tell me if that changes," he says, closing his eyes and turning his face in toward the back of the couch, and Sam smiles again even if Dean can't see it. The chances of him telling depend entirely on what he sees, he thinks, and settles down onto one of the solid, old dining chairs. For once, he's going to be the one watching over his brother while he sleeps.

Bobby shows up around sunset. Rufus calls the next day, demanding to know why Bobby's house has burnt down and where they think they're getting off, using his cabin. Sam's not sure he wants to know how Rufus found out that they're here. Bobby disappears for a day or two, after that. He comes back with food, a box of books of dubious provenance, and two bottles of whiskey, and gives the two of them a reassuring clap to the shoulder before heading off again to parts unknown.

A week passes. Sam still can't seem to go more than about eight hours without sleeping and he finds himself waking up in the corner of the couch at all hours, startling upright almost every time. Dean very obviously tries to refrain from commenting, though he can't help the occasional, "You okay, Sam?" It's not like he minds. He's not okay, really, but there's no power on Earth that could stop Dean from asking.

One night, he falls asleep during an episode of some bizarre telenovela Dean's started watching (he doesn't know how Dean's following the story, considering his atrocious Spanish, but he gets shushed if he talks over the top of the ludicrous dialogue and he decides not to question it). When he wakes up again, he's scratching his way out of the dark, the abyss yawning just at his back, and Dean's hands are locked tight around his wrists.

"Sorry," Sam manages, struggling to get enough air, and Dean fumbles on the television with a sudden burst of color, the test pattern Sam hasn't seen in years spilling rainbow light into the room. Not enough to hide the bloodless, taut lines of Dean's face, and Sam closes his eyes. There's a solid warmth pressed up against his side, Dean's fingers curled loosely around his wrist, still, like he's afraid to let go. Sam drinks it in, but he doesn't dare shift closer, doesn't push, no matter that the want is clawing a pit in his stomach. He breathes, slow and even, and eases back down, pushes his temple into the scratchy couch arm. Dean doesn't say anything. When Sam finally slides back into sleep there's a warm line at his hip where Dean hasn't moved.

He's struggling. He knows it. Sometimes, when he wakes up on the cot, dreams still a foggy impression coloring the world, he turns over and Lucifer's sitting on the edge of his bed, watching him. Sometimes he's standing at the old stove heating up water for pasta and he blinks and then is covered in flames, and he's halfway to a scream before he grabs for his palm, shoves his thumb so hard into the half-healed cut spots dance in front of his eyes. There's going to be one hell of a scar there, before he's done. Every time he resorts to it, he can feel Dean looking at him, but he still doesn't say anything. What is there to say, really?

Bobby brings back word on the Leviathan on their ninth day hiding out in the cabin. More pressing, he brings Rufus, too, who greets Sam with a nod and Dean with a vicious left hook.

"Good to see you, too," Dean says, through the hand clapped over his chin.

"Kid, you almost electrocuted me to death," Rufus retorts. He's thinner than Sam remembers, but his voice carries every familiar ounce of _you idiot_ disdain.

"You were a host for a monster!"

Rufus flaps a hand and takes a seat at the table. "I was there. You owe me a new pacemaker." Sam has to stifle a grin at Dean's expression when Rufus turns away, abruptly dismissing him. "Bobby, what's the word on how to kill these dumbass things?"

Later, Sam's standing out on the back porch, elbows on the railing, eyes on the shadows between the trees. "Hey," he hears, and Dean appears in his peripheral vision. He takes the bottle with a mumbled thanks, but right at this moment talking doesn't sound doable. He'd lost himself while Bobby and Rufus discussed the various Leviathan immunities—a triple-whammy hallucination of knives and blood and Dean, not something he ever needs to see again—and it had taken long minutes to pull himself out. He doesn't think Rufus or Bobby noticed, but—well, it's pointless to try to keep anything from Dean.

They drink in silence for a few minutes. Dean closed the door when he came out and Sam can't hear Bobby or Rufus. He wonders how long they'll stay, now. The cabin was clearly designed with Rufus' solitude in mind and is barely big enough to contain Sam and Dean, much less four grown men. He doubts Rufus wants them to linger, even if he's been told what Sam now is.

"Hey, check it out," Dean says. He glances over, but Dean's looking off into the woods. The sun's going down behind the mountains, and so the light diffused over the trees is a dark, dying gold. Makes it hard to see anything, but Sam obligingly runs his eyes over the ragged pines, the tangled shrubs and wild-grown grass at their feet. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to focus, but he finally catches a twitch of movement and sees, half-hidden in the growing shadow, the soft grey lines of a deer. It's nosing at the tall weeds at the base of one of the bigger pines, blissfully unaware of their presence. It's small, Sam thinks, maybe just born this spring. While they watch, it apparently finishes its inspection of the little shrub and moves slowly off, unafraid. It's bizarre not to see it bolt.

"Weird," Dean says, as though he heard the thought.

"What is?"

He looks over in time to catch the shrug. Dean leans his elbows on the wood railing, beer dangling loosely between his fingertips. "Just a little déjà vu. Last time we were in Montana, same thing happened, practically. Bozeman, remember?"

Sam thinks back. His impression of Bozeman is just of highway, a stop on the way to anywhere else. He and Dean had stayed at some tiny roadside motel, he recalls, but other than that—

Dean looks over, catches him frowning. "You know, Bobby mentioned..." He trails off, but there's something solid in Sam's throat and he doesn't help. Dean takes a sip of his beer, barely enough to wet his lips before he's twirling the bottle between his fingers again, catching the damp edge of the label. "Said you'd been having some trouble."

He has to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. Work his jaw for a second. "Thought that was pretty obvious," he manages.

It earns him a little snort, but Dean's working at the label with a fingernail, now, doesn't look amused. "Said you'd been having trouble for a while now. Maybe longer than—that maybe it's been longer than the past couple weeks. You can't remember stuff?"

He shifts his weight, pushes himself upright. "Yeah. Well, I told you that."

"Yeah." Dean's tense, though he's probably trying to hide it. He bows his head. "How far back?"

He puts himself in the corner of the porch, leans the small of his back into the wood rail. "You mean, where does my memory start to crap out?" Dean's silent, which Sam supposes he has to take as a yes. He can't quite make himself stare at his brother and so looks off into the trees again. "It's—well, it's spotty. I can remember lots of stuff, just... not always right, maybe. Everything's pretty mixed up, you know?"

"So—Bozeman, then. You don't remember that?"

He glances back. The question could have been casual, but something in Dean's voice is tight. He hasn't moved an inch and the label to the beer has shredded right off, paper dropped unseen to the forest below. He closes his eyes and tries to think. Bozeman. That had been—after the dragons, when it turned out Eve had been summoned. They'd just driven down I-90 until it was time to stop, no destination in mind, and Dean had swung into some sixties-era motel, and then—an impression of amused drowsiness, of warmth. The rest is... fuzzed out, somehow, blurring away like the facts of a dream after the first bright moments of waking.

He opens his eyes to find Dean finally upright, hip leaned into the railing, watching him. He wonders what it is he's missing. "I guess not," he says, at last. "Am I missing something important?"

Dean stares for a beat, then shrugs. "We watched _Red_ , that Helen Mirren assassin movie," he says, after a second. He takes a step toward the door, then turns and puts his back to the wall instead, leans his weight heavily into the side of the building and gives Sam a steady look. "You fell asleep before the end. Typical. Woke up just before dawn and saw some deer, just like now." He nods at the now-dark forest.

A surge of recollection does hit him, then. Standing just behind Dean in a crowded little bathroom, pointing out the animals in the grey light, but thinking of what he'd dreamed: curling up with his brother in a shared bed, soaking up all that heat and strength. A finger brushing over his knuckles, soft. Another hallucination, then, even that far back, and he really wishes he could go back and tell Death his wall-building fucking sucks.

The sun's sinking fast, now. Where Dean's standing, his chest is bisected by a wavering line of light, only his shoulders and face lit gold and the rest of him in shadow. He's turned his eyes away from Sam, and while Sam watches he shakes his head and then tilts it back against the wall, swallows the last of his beer. His throat bobs, once, and he closes his eyes and just rests there, and Sam doesn't know whether it's the forcing of memories or the world-tilting rush of another hallucination—his stomach clenches, his teeth sink into his lip, and the visual hits him right in the chest and it's like all the oxygen burns out of his lungs.

The sense-memory is so strong he's digging his fingers into his thigh, probably giving himself bruises. _Dean stretched up against a motel wall, the curtains closed just enough to give them privacy, still letting in enough late afternoon light that when Sam looks up he can see everything he wants. His knees already starting to hurt from his position on the linoleum floor, his dick an aching line of pressure in too-tight jeans, but it doesn't matter because he's bracketed by Dean's legs, Dean's boots planted either side of Sam's thighs, and he runs his hands up the warm denim length of calf, back of knee, the sweet curve of his ass. Dean's looking down at him with that half-dazed expression that makes something in Sam go huge and tight and hot, makes him want to pick Dean up and cradle him protectively close, makes him want to put him on his back in the shadow of Sam's own body. He gets Dean's belt open, unzips the fly, and he licks his lips and watches how Dean's own mouth drops open, how his eyes are huge and so dark Sam can't see the color, and then he's sliding down on warm-salt-wet skin, tang already hitting the back of his throat, and he squeezes his eyes shut tight because this, here, this is what he dreams about. He doesn't have to focus, really, because this is familiar, and so he's free to relish the weight on his tongue, the slick hot glide, his hands tight on Dean's hips in an attempt to ease the fine tremors that just don't stop._

This is one of those memories, then, the rare ones, and Sam's stomach flips but it's pointless to lie to himself, now. When he thinks about Dean he usually remembers mockery, jostling, wrestling leading to sex, fun sex, on a bed or up against walls or on tables or, sometimes, over the hood of the Impala, Dean grinning and moaning and being—himself, Sam's sunshine-bright big brother, expanding past the limits of his skin as he always seemed to when Sam was small. Sometimes, though, his brain will uncover one of these memories. They're dimmer, less Technicolor-vivid, but they're gems just the same. In these memories Dean is quiet, rarely initiates; in these he looks at Sam with eyes gone wide, unsure and trying to hide it. Sam doesn't know why Lucifer gave him this, but it was—almost better, somehow, Dean quivering under Sam's hands like a virgin but his skin heating to Sam's touch all the same, and so Sam tried to be gentle, put his mouth on Dean's and felt it open slow as an orchid under him, skated his fingers over Dean's shaking flanks and smiled in triumph into Dean's neck when he coaxed out a moan, when Dean's cock filled for him, when he finally pushed up against Sam rigid and yearning.

_His mouth full of the solid evidence of Dean wanting him, and when Dean's hands settle on his skull, those blunt familiar fingers sliding into his hair, Sam could almost come from that. One thumb strokes over his cheekbone, over the fragile skin just under his eye, and the gentleness of it makes Sam's chest tight. His chin's wet, already, but he knows Dean doesn't care if he's sloppy and so he just firms his lips, pulls up in tight slow drags that make Dean's breath sharp, desperate. Sam's good at this, too, so it's not long before Dean's hands tighten in his hair, and he tries to pull Sam off but Sam just holds on, tongue working just under the head, keeps one hand on Dean's hip and slides the other between Dean's legs. There's not much room, the jeans still snug halfway down Dean's thighs and keeping his legs together, but there's enough space for Sam to slide long fingers behind his balls, skating over the tight smooth skin further back, and he sucks hard and circles the hole with firm pressure, dry, but Dean's whole body jerks anyway and just like that he's coming, slamming his head back into the wall, hips finally moving to grind between Sam's mouth and his fingers as though he can't decide which he wants most. It's almost enough to make Sam—but he can't, not yet. He slides up the length of Dean's body instead, swallowing, lips buzzing like he's drunk, and he settles his mouth on the underside of Dean's jaw so he doesn't stare at that flushed face, those half-lidded eyes, and do something he'll regret. He fumbles his jeans open, dick springing out already wet and eager against Dean's hip, his stomach, and he's about to take care of it when a hand closes over him. He picks his head up, surprised. Dean's eyes are closed but he firms his grip, jerks Sam a little awkwardly but nice and tight. Sam bucks into it, his hands sliding onto Dean's waist, to the back of his neck, and when he crowds a little closer to suck in Dean's body heat Dean's lips part and Sam's on them, mouth demanding and a little rougher than he means to be, but it provokes a deep, startled noise from the back of Dean's throat and Sam grinds close and comes, over Dean's hand and hip and t-shirt, and that's good, but not as good as the look on Dean's face when Sam pulls back, half-stunned and wet-mouthed and looking down at his messy hand. It makes Sam want to do it all over again. He puts a thumb at the edge of Dean's lip, dragging a little to see the pink inside, and—_

He blinks. He's still standing in the corner of the porch, light fading fast around them. Dean sighs, and forces his eyes open with what looks to be a phenomenal amount of effort. Sam hopes the light's gone enough that his own face is in shadow, because he doubts he has his expression under control.

Dean frowns, a little, squinting at him. "You okay, Sammy?"

All right, definitely not. "Yeah," Sam says. The enormity of the lie doesn't make his voice even waver, but also doesn't impress Dean, who just quirks an eyebrow at him. "Just tired. Sorry."

That's true, at least. Dean watches him for another moment, but he knows from hard-won experience that Dean cannot see through him nearly as well as he can see through Dean, and so Dean may know something's wrong but can't know what.

"Why don't you see if there's any of that chili left," Dean says, after a while, and it's so much like what he used to sound like when Sam was a teenager. It should make him shudder, especially since the heat of the memory still thuds through his veins, but it doesn't. That should bother him, too. It doesn't.

 

 

He needs to sort this out.

They leave Rufus' cabin just after dawn the next day. Turns out Rufus had been halfway to a hunt when he'd gotten in touch with Bobby—probable werewolf attacks in northern Utah, two murdered so far, something easy. Dean had volunteered to look into it almost before Rufus had finished outlining the few details of the case. Bobby had looked between him and Sam, the question obvious, and Sam found himself agreeing to go just on principle. Dean hadn't argued, weirdly, and Sam found himself wondering if Dean really thought he was up to it, or if he was just unwilling to let his little brother out of his sight.

Either way, it's good to be on the road again. Dean drives slowly back out of the woods, careful with the car as he wasn't on their panicked flight from Sioux Falls, and Sam keeps his eyes on the trees, on the little ponds and lakes that keep appearing in the gaps between the pines. Dean keeps the radio low, but they're not talking—not unusual for this early in the morning, only one cup of coffee under their belts. Good thing, too, because if it came to it Sam's not sure everything wouldn't just come tumbling out of his mouth. At least it's just the two of them in the car; if the shades of archangels were filling the backseat it really would be more than he could bear.

"I'm going to need gas in about sixty miles," Dean says. His voice is low, rough with lack of sleep. "Stop for breakfast in Polson?"

"Sure." He catches Dean's nod in his periphery, feels him settle down for an easy drive through his shifting on the bench seat. With Rufus there, the sleeping arrangements had been shuffled—Rufus took the bunk, of course, and Bobby folded himself into an armchair in the corner with his hat pulled over his eyes, and Sam had come out of the tiny bathroom ready to take a spot on the floorboards when he'd seen Dean already stretched out on his stomach, right next to the couch, like they were back at Bobby's. He'd already been asleep, head buried in his arms, and so Sam had carefully stepped over him, spread himself onto the couch facedown, watching the slow rise and fall of Dean's back. If he'd reached out, he could've traced the curve of it, the gentle slope of the spine between his shoulderblades, the dip into the small of his back just above the loose waist of his jeans. The cabin had been quiet, but for Bobby's heavy almost-snores and the low hum of the muted television, and Sam had closed his eyes and let his arm fall off the couch, so his hand was an inch from Dean's warmth, and had tried not to hope for more.

He glances over. Dean's tapping a thumb on the wheel to the low sounds of the Stones on the radio, brow slightly furrowed but mouth at ease. He's got his eyes on the road, and though he's within easy reach he feels like he's miles away, thoughts on something Sam can't touch. He wants—everything, of course, but right this second he wishes he could push his brother into a mattress and just let him sleep, wants to hear everything he missed, wants to know what's making Dean watch the horizon with such distant eyes. It's a little difficult to reconcile that with the much simpler desire to pull the car onto the side of the road and tumble Dean into the dew-wet grass.

For all that, though, he has no idea where this is coming from. When he started to want it. Thousands of years in a cage, seeping through every barrier he or Death could hope to erect, and at this point it's a miracle he even remembers anything that happened before it, much less how he—how he felt. There's a weird duality to almost everything he sees, every memory he has. He can remember the heady, independent thrill he'd gotten, moving into the house with Jess, and at the same time he remembers her little delicate hands sliding knives into him or, worse, watching her die and not caring. With Dean in front of him, he can talk seriously about the Leviathan and smile and be the little brother Dean believes in—and if he closes his eyes there's another Dean there, one that Sam knows from heavy-lidded eyes to damp mouth to wet clinging muscle around his fingers, his cock, and it hits him hard in the gut every time but it's unbearably good, too. Whenever it happens he can practically feel Lucifer's glee. _A forge_ , he remembers, from one of those conversations the angels had had over his bleeding back. _This is a forge_.

He's not confused anymore, at least. He has impressions of being thirteen, sixteen, watching Dean and having that low hot confusion coil tight in his gut. He's fairly certain it was real. Even if it wasn't, it hardly matters, because now it's all jagged, murky memory, whether it actually happened all those years ago or not. He remembers, and it's not like he can go to therapy, have someone else tell him what's right and what's wrong. Under his skin he has this: bursting out of motel rooms, talking back and fighting and running away, anything to get away from the bewilderment of Dean's lips, of watching him reduce a girl to a wreck, of waking up before him  and staring at the way the pre-dawn light silvered him to something supernatural, and wishing—

He takes a deep breath. A decade's distance and the experience of the cage have done their work. With everything that happened, all those old self-deceptions and facades have dropped away and he is reduced down to bone, the only things left the things that really matter. He can't, all at once, be the boy who ran away to Stanford, the one who brought about the Apocalypse, the soulless shell who hadn't felt, the victim of the angels. All he can be is—Sam. He looks over as Dean changes lanes to pass a slow-moving farm truck. He hopes that's enough.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Sam finishes salting the door and single window of their little motel room in Evanston, trying to settle himself enough to pull out the laptop and find their next case. The room's adequate, even if they do have to pay for wifi, and the carpet's dark enough to hide the few blood drips Dean couldn't catch as he rushed into the bathroom. Sam sets the half-empty salt canister on the floor and drops to the mattress, buries his face in his hands and listens to the shower sputter through the half-closed door.

He shouldn't be this shaken. This hunt didn't go any worse than their usual, blood spillage notwithstanding.

"Out of practice, that's all." There's a smile in Lucifer's voice. "And a little distracted. I'm sure it'll pass. Of course, it might take you with it."

He drags his hands off his face and stands. If Dean's going to trust that he's all right, he can't be sitting here like an idiot when he gets out of the shower. Their bags are already inside and he follows the evening ritual with the ease of a lifetime's familiarity: Dean's shotgun here, Sam's there, knife under the pillow where Dean'll reach for it without having to think. They don't have anywhere to be tomorrow, so there's no sense in unpacking their suits, and there's no beer to stow in the mini-fridge. More's the pity, Sam thinks, and grinds the heel of his hand into his forehead. Maybe if they hadn't been in such a hurry to leave Utah, or if Dean weren't bleeding free from the gash on his forearm where the wolf's claw had gotten him, just before Sam got off the last shot.

"Think he could use a little first aid?" he hears. He closes his eyes. "I'm sure you could rustle up a doctor outfit somewhere."

Sam breathes out, slowly, but it is a point. He digs the first aid kit out of his duffel and sets out their clean cloth bandages, the alcohol and needle, if it turns out to be necessary. The desk chair isn't really comfortable, but he slouches down as best he can, trying to look at nothing and think of less. The shower turns off, after a little while, and he tilts his head back to stare at the popcorn ceiling, knowing that there's almost exactly five minutes left before Dean's finished.

When he was younger he'd thought that there was no way this could ever be his life. Two men, two beds, little stained sinks and kitchenettes, nothing permanent but the car outside and the weird cramped feeling that his whole existence was travel-sized. Moving from one grave to another, digging up bones to burn away memories. That horrible hollow space in his chest, spending every other minute waiting for—something. Anything else.

He watches the slivers of Dean that appear in the half-cracked bathroom doorway. Flash of pale blue towel, glimpse of startlingly fair skin, sink running while he shaves. He'd gotten something else, gotten four years and then ten horrible months of life alone, gotten himself stretched so thin it's a miracle he didn't just tear right in half. He'd thought he'd known something about nightmares.

"Not even the half of it, Sam," Lucifer says. When Sam glances over they're both sprawled on his bed. Michael's watching the silent television, Lucifer's head pillowed on his shoulder. "But I taught you better, didn't I."

Knowing that it's from his own head doesn't make it better. Even so, Sam thinks, _Even you couldn't have thought of this_. He ignores Lucifer's laughter when he turns his eyes away from how Dean comes out of the bathroom, damp towel slung around his hips, from the smooth span of his shoulders as he digs through his duffel for a clean shirt.

"Something's gotta give," Lucifer says, and Sam picks his head up and looks right past the two of them because they're not there, no matter that he can see them smiling, and says, "You want to order a pizza or something?"

Dean glances over his shoulder, briefly, then tugs an old green t-shirt over his head. "Yeah. Sausage and olive? Cash is in my wallet."

Sam stands, dials, orders looking out the window so he doesn't have to watch Dean pull off the towel, tug worn-soft jeans up his hips. "This is getting maudlin," Michael says, right over the top of the girl at the pizza place so Sam can't hear the total, and he closes his eyes and says, "I will, thanks," when the girl tells him to have a good night. After all, there's always a chance.

"Man, I don't want to do werewolves again for at least a year," Dean says. Sam takes a breath and turns around, puts his back to the wall. Dean's examining the gash on his arm, which thankfully looks less like a gash and more like a cut now that the blood's been washed off. It's barely seeping, doesn't look like it'll need the stitches after all. "And if we never need to go through Utah again, that'd be fine, too."

Sam stays still, watches Dean pad around the room on bare feet. "You got something against Utah now?"

Dean snorts, running a practiced eye over Sam's salt lines. "Three-two beer, prissy women and prissier men. Hell, I'd take Delaware over Utah."

He goes back into the bathroom for his bloodied and torn clothes, comes out pushing his fingers through the hole in his jacket sleeve and scowling. Sam pushes through the sudden tightness in his throat, says, "You'd hate Delaware, too. Too many ghosts back east."

"Yeah, well." He apparently gives up the jacket as a lost cause and tosses it toward the room's tiny trash can. "At least ghosts don't eat hearts. Usually."

Sam makes a noncommittal noise. Dean finally settles into the desk chair and reaches for the bandages. Before he can overthink he shoves himself forward, holding out a hand. "Here, I'll do it." Dean looks up, brow furrowed in a question. Sam shrugs. "You always leave it too loose."

A complicated expression flits over Dean's face and for a second Sam thinks he's going to pull away. After a moment, though, he presses his lips together and nods. Sam half-sits on the desk and Dean extends his arm for bandaging, his wrist naturally coming to rest on Sam's knee while he winds the cloth over and around the tanned expanse of his forearm. He pulls it tight, as promised, when he finishes, and tucks the end neatly into the space at the crook of Dean's elbow.

"There," he says, inanely, but Dean doesn't look up at him. He stares at the neat white lines of the bandage, and when he bites his lips between his teeth like he's trying to stop himself from saying something Sam becomes suddenly aware that the faint weight of the Dean's wrist on his leg hasn't moved. Something swirls at the back of his mind, some memory or other rising hot and fast, and it's an effort to shift out from under Dean's hand, to move naturally back across the room to his duffel bag. "Pizza should be here in about ten minutes, I think. You got any leads on our next case?"

It takes a second, but eventually Dean says, "Not yet. Give us a few minutes to catch our breath, hot stuff. We're safe for now, we don't always have to be running off on a hunt."

Sam stares blindly into his bag, hands buried in the wrinkled plaid flannel of one of his oldest shirts. He doesn't even know what he's pretending to search for. Behind him, there's a soft laugh, and Lucifer says, "I've said it before, but I am _good_ ," and Sam fumbles his hands together and pushes his thumb so hard into his palm that something pops.

He stands there long enough that Dean says, "You okay?"

He opens his eyes. His hand hurts. "Yeah, sorry. I'm fine." When he turns around, Dean's the only thing he sees, and he digs up a brief smile. "Just want to get back on the horse, you know?"

Dean's eyes are steady on him and Sam—he can't tell what that expression is, and for a second it seems absurd. Dean doesn't know it, but unless they're actively working a con he carries his emotions right on his face. Always has. Even when he's trying to hide something, Sam might not know the exact details but he's always been able to tell just how Dean felt. Now, though, he has to look away, break eye contact, because for a surreal moment he feels like a stranger, like someone who doesn't have the privilege of understanding Dean Winchester, and if that's true, then—but then there's a car entering the motel's parking lot, headlights flashing across the window, and Dean glances away as it squeals into park a few spaces down from the Impala.

"Jesus," he says, squinting. Sam takes a deep breath. "Guy's got a stupid little Japanese car, least he could do is change the belts so it wouldn't be as annoying as it is ugly."

"You know, sometimes I think you should've grown up in the forties," Sam says. It's the only thing he can think of. "At least then the rah-rah American cars thing would make sense."

Dean rolls to his feet, easy as breathing, and gives Sam a semi-outraged look. "I'm not car-racist, Sam, but there's being one big happy global family and then there's reducing yourself to driving a Nissan," and just like that he's Sam's big brother and they're squabbling like Sam's seventeen again. He rolls his eyes on cue, and it doesn't feel forced, and he launches into his side of the argument and doesn't feel even the phantom echo of angels. Dean rolls his eyes right back, obviously hiding a little grin, and Sam thinks, _I can do this. I can._

 

Sam thought it would get easier and, in a way, it does. After the werewolf there's a simple haunting in an old Santa Fe monastery, and after those bones are burnt there's a cursed locket in Kentucky that kills two women before they shut it up in their dad's storage facility in Black Rock. Through it all, Sam does his utmost to be fine. He thinks Dean believes him. On the job he treats Sam just the same, lets him take point when they're questioning witnesses, trusts that Sam will be at his back when they're about to enter a fight. It's not until they're back at their motel or sitting in an anonymous diner that he'll catch Dean watching him with one of those unreadable looks that make his chest clench tight. Lucifer doesn't shut up, of course, and Sam spends long nights awake, a voice in his ear urging him to just _let it go, Sam, just let it go and it'll happen_. He starts napping in the car. When he dreams, he sees fire and blood and iron at his wrists, but it's rare that he's forced to see his brother. A little reprieve, at least. It'd be truly unfair to be riddled with that terrifying longing both day and night.

He's tired, though. He knows Dean has noticed, but he hasn't said anything. He just drinks. Half a handle a night, sometimes, but even if Sam could screw up the courage to say something it's not like he's got room to talk. In their motel room a day outside Prosperity, Indiana, he keeps his eyes on his laptop until Dean falls asleep, and then has no pretense when he closes the lid and just watches the rise and fall of Dean's chest. He's actually under the blanket, jeans shucked into a puddle at the side of the bed. He remembers Dean in those months just after he'd been pulled out of Hell, only a few years ago ( _or thousands_ , his brain supplies), how bewildered he'd been at how Dean was suddenly body-shy. Couldn't bear to remove those layers of what was abruptly armor, even to sleep, even if only Sam could possibly have seen. It didn't take much of a mental leap to figure out why. Still, he thinks, tracing his eyes over the exposed line of Dean's throat, he wonders when Dean lost that habit. When he started to feel safe again.

"Jealous?" Lucifer says.

He doesn't mean to glance over, it's only—well, he is tired, and for no reason his throat aches, and he's caught off-guard. Lucifer's sitting on the bed that's supposed to be Sam's. For once, he doesn't look mocking. Sam swallows, because there's the devil watching him with what he's certain is sympathy, because he's seen that expression far too often. He wonders what that says about him.

"I know how you feel, Sam." Lucifer glances up, over his head, and Sam realizes without turning that Michael must be standing right behind him, leaning up against the kitchenette's sink. It ought to raise his hackles. "It's a strange realization, isn't it. How everything just... kept going, while you were gone. Knowing you'll never get to see what his life was like, even though you should have been there."

Sam blinks. Behind him, Michael says, "Maudlin," in a quiet voice, and Lucifer looks down at the carpet and shrugs. After a few moments, there's a rustle and Michael steps out into Sam's field of vision. He doesn't go to Lucifer, like Sam expects; instead he stands right at the foot of Dean's bed, staring down at him just as Sam had. For once, it isn't a look of loathing.

There's a beat of silence, and then Michael says:

_He let himself get wrapped into Lisa's life and it was like being swaddled in warm cotton, like a just-laundered shirt pressed over his face, masking everything in that comfortable smell. There was whiskey, of course, and lots of it, but there was also Ben, who knew not to ask questions but hero-worshipped all the same. He found himself giving slightly random almost-fatherly advice, but he knew he treated the kid more like a little brother sometimes than like a son. Lisa's hands were calm and soft when she pulled empty bottles out of his lax fingers and he didn't fight her, of course not. He didn't fight it when she told him she knew someone who was working on a big construction project one town over,  that he was looking for guys who were strong, good with their hands. He raised houses, then, learned the new tools and habits so fast it was like someone else's muscle memory taking over. Slightly less whiskey, after that, because jackhammers and hangovers didn't mix. But it was all useless, really, because even the clean line of a perfectly-hung door, even the careful press of lips to his temple when Lisa thought he was sleeping, even showing Ben how to change a spark plug and taking in the kid's delighted smile when he did it right—it wasn't enough to bandage over the bloody places. Dean wasn't sure he wanted to, no matter what he'd promised._

"Because how could he," Michael's saying, and for no reason at all Sam's eyes are hot, blurring with tears. Michael's watching Lucifer, now, but Sam can't look away from his own brother, from the safe sleeping ache of him. "How could he, when every day he woke and thought, 'He's dead,' and then he was just supposed to get up, keep living, like—"

Michael shakes his head. Sam swallows at Lucifer's expression, and has to close his eyes against it when Lucifer stands, when he takes a step closer to Michael. He thinks of four months of walking around in a daze, an empty place at his right side and a demon at his ear, hardly knowing what day it was, no sense anymore for gravity, or fear. Before that, six months that even now seem perilously real, hunting for the trickster that had taken his brother away and letting himself become something he shouldn't, that he wouldn't have been, that he'd thought he could never be. Who'd have thought that losing Dean would be so much like misplacing the soul, he thinks, and the loneliness of those days scrapes under his ribs like a dying thing and he's just—he's so tired.

"I know you are, Sam," comes the voice at his ear, and there's a careful touch to his shoulder, a hand petting down his forearm to where his hand is trembling. The voice says, "Let me, Sam, let me—" and Sam keeps his eyes shut tight and says, "Okay," in a tone he wishes he didn't recognize.

He's drawn to his feet, his jacket and flannel stripped off by sure hands. He lets himself be led to the bed and leans into the solid strength at his back when fingers go to his fly, when his jeans get pushed down. He thinks, for a second, that this is going a different direction, but there's just a soft shushing at his ear and he's pushed down to sit on the bed while his boots come off, and his socks and the tangle of his jeans, and then he's sliding under the blankets into the embrace of a warm, familiar body. He blinks his eyes open at last to see his fingers curling into a dark grey t-shirt, and he looks up and it's his brother, giving him a one-sided smile that etches his crow's feet in deep lines beside his eyes.

He thinks, _you're not real_ , but this Dean only slides his hand onto the back of Sam's neck, and Sam lets himself be pulled close, tucks his face into the shadows between their bodies. The light by the desk is still on, as is the one in the bathroom, because his Dean turned them on before he went to sleep as he always does. Sam thinks about that, about the casual wordless protectiveness of it, and it'd be enough to make him cry but he's too exhausted for that. The hand in his hair is light, the thumb brushing gentle over the tender hollow at the top of his spine, and with his last lucid thought he wonders if this, too, counts as a betrayal, and then finally slides into a dark and dreamless sleep.

 

After Prosperity, after the witches and the Leviathan and the trussed-up body in the backseat, Dean sends a careful look over the top of the car and asks Sam if there's anything he'd like to say, and for an insane moment Sam thinks about it.

"What do you mean?" he says, instead.

Dean folds his arms on the car's hood, eyes fixed on Sam. "You know how you—I mean, you really got to the Starks tonight. They just got everything off their chests, you know, got the dirty laundry all aired out, all that crap."

"Yeah," Sam says. "Can't believe it worked. I guess we can put one in the win column, huh?"

"Right." There's a twitch at the corner of Dean's mouth, but he doesn't smile. Sam looks down at the glossy black paint on the Impala, keeps his hands deep in his pockets. "You know, you're usually the one who goes for that. The whole—sharing and caring thing."

Sam watches his reflection. His face is too dark to really make anything out, but he can see when someone steps up beside him. "He makes a good point, Sam," Lucifer says, and Sam shrugs.

There's a sharp exhalation, on the other side of the car, and he glances up to find Dean looking frustrated, at last. He pushes back onto his hands, making fists against the cold metal. "I wish—"

His voice sounds a little rougher than Sam expects. He clears his throat. "What?"

There's a pause, and then Dean shakes his head. Sam looks back down at the oil-black slickness of the roof, at the reflection of Lucifer he finds there. Dean says, "I just want you to be okay, Sam. Whatever I can do to make that happen, all you have to do is tell me."

He can tell Dean's looking at him but he doesn't dare look up, doesn't want to see whatever expression is there. "I'm okay," he says. Maybe not true, but it can be. It will be, if it's the last thing he does. "It's all good."

He slides into the passenger seat, closes his eyes. There's a good thirty seconds before the driver's side door creaks open  and he waits through them in something like apprehension, but when Dean's weight settles onto the other side of the bench he doesn't talk again. Sam listens to the key sliding into the ignition, the shifting of gears as the car purrs into drive, and Lucifer says, "We can make it okay," and then there's the whirr of a cassette slotting into the tape deck. _The Boxer_ fills the car, the twinned voices mellow and sweet, and Sam leans his temple against the window's cold glass and pretends to sleep.

 

After they dump the Leviathan at the cabin there's a haunted bathroom in Boise, and then a series of false leads that turn out not to be vampires at all just outside Omaha, and then Bobby calls them in an unfeigned panic and tells them to shred all their fake cards and any scraps of their flimsy cover IDs, and then it's a long week of going bar to bar, hustling at pool and poker and darts, working their way across the Rust Belt with Dean always looking in the rearview mirror, always watching for pursuit.

The motels get more anonymous and they check in under names like Tom Smith, John Robinson. Sam has to wait longer and longer for Dean to fall asleep before he can close his eyes, let someone half-carry him to bed, stroke his hair off his brow. He knows it's not real, but he doesn't bother with his scarred palm, either. He tucks his head into not-Dean's shoulder and doesn't really think about the details, like how against all reason Dean's stubble is soft against his temple, how his hands are uncallused when they stroke carefully under Sam's t-shirt.

He wakes up in a motel in Cedar Rapids at two in the morning and the false Dean is gone. He turns over to find the real one still sleeping, empty bottles a little forest on the end table, and something in his chest relaxes. In the dim light from the bathroom he tucks his arm under his head and watches Dean's profile, the reassuring rise and fall of his ribs under the thin white sheet.

"Is this what you want?" The question's soft. Lucifer is sitting on the edge of his mattress, a few inches from Sam's knee. "Is this what you needed?"

He sinks back into the pillow and doesn't answer. The light from the bathroom is a bright, bright white, and in its glow Dean's temple and lips are touched silver. He closes his eyes with that image behind them and, just like that, there's warm weight at his back.

He falls asleep in Fort Wayne, in Evansville, in Chattanooga. When they're hustling a table Dean's as put together and cocky as ever, but once they've got cash in hand and can drop the pretense that _look_ gets turned on Sam, like some kind of compulsion, like Dean can't look at Sam anymore like he's supposed to. Sam plays his part. He grins and rolls his eyes and throws a perfect game of darts, and he doesn't know how else to convince Dean, how to show him it's okay.

In North Carolina they hit a little coven of three (oldest witch dead, the younger man and woman left terrified of Dean but alive) and then push through four towns in three days—Cape Fear, Greenville, Elizabeth City, passing in a blur of green felt and ignoring how Dean keeps not saying anything, and by the time they end up in Kill Devil Hills Sam's so torn up he forgets his only rule, which is: make sure Dean's asleep.

It's just that he's so tired. It's three in the morning on a Sunday and Dean had made sure they'd fleeced just the right targets of only ninety percent of their cash, which made Sam feel a little better but took time. He's not even sure what they're doing in this town, off on the far blue edge of the Atlantic, except that Dean can't quell the half-grin that pops up every time he says the name. He stares up at the pale yellow ceiling of the motel room, thinking about Dean's hands steady on a cue, as steady as he's seen them on the wheel of the Impala, as he's seen them holding victims down and splitting the skin between their ribs with a sharp scalpel. He presses the pads of his fingers into his eyes until the darkness behind them sparkles purple. Like bruises, he thinks, and then steady hands curl around his wrists, pull his hands away. He keeps his eyes closed and turns onto his stomach, pillowing his head on his folded arms. The weight at his side shifts, gentle and warm and silent as always, and he's almost asleep when the sound at the edge of his hearing ceases and he realizes, _the shower. Dean's in the shower_.

He listens to the sink running, to the regular scrape and tap of Dean shaving. Fingers nudge up the hem of his t-shirt and trace slow, careful shapes into the small of his back and he feels paralyzed. For a second he wants to haul up to his feet and push into the tiny bathroom and grab Dean by the chin, ignore the shaving foam and kiss him, or maybe just tell him every single thing he can remember and wait for the cataclysm of his reaction, the inevitable tectonic disgust that will finally cleave from Sam that old protective love. A hand in the shape of Dean's spreads out on Sam's skin, though, and just the image of it, just the idea, keeps him flat to the bed, eyes closed while Dean pads from the bathroom to the other bed. He sinks onto it with a sigh and the muffled creak of the old box-spring.

A minute passes. Sam listens to the thud of his own heartbeat. When he thinks he can risk it he slits his eyes open and Dean's just sitting on the edge of the mattress in t-shirt and boxer-briefs, watching him. Their eyes meet and Sam waits for a joke to let him off the hook—something about the creepiness of watching someone sleep, maybe, or—well, he doesn't know what, but nothing comes to his lips. Dean isn't wearing the look that makes Sam want to fling himself from a precipice, at least. He looks as tired as Sam feels: shadows under the eyes, generous mouth curved down. He waits for Dean to say something, to talk about the next hunt or the night's marks, but nothing's forthcoming. He's swirling a fifth of bourbon between his knees, slow, and Sam doesn't remember the level on it being so low, but then he isn't the most reliable witness anymore, is he. After another excruciating moment Dean takes his eyes off Sam, takes a long couple of swallows, and Sam breathes shakily through his nose, watches Dean put down the bottle and swing onto his back on the mattress. Rather than staying right on the edge, though, where his hand would dangle near the shotgun's handle, he scoots over toward the middle of the bed. The space he makes is big enough that another person could crawl in with him, Sam thinks, and his mouth goes dry.

Dean doesn't say anything, doesn't look over. He turns on his side so that his back's to Sam, and Sam imagines shoving his own blankets off, taking that single step and fitting his chest to Dean's heartbeat, his flexing ribs, to feel the living solidity of him. He takes a breath.

A careful fingernail traces up his spine, over the faint bumps of his lumbar vertebrae, and he has to stifle a shudder. Lucifer's voice says, "You don't have to be afraid," and he thinks back: _of course I do._ He rolls onto his back and there's a Dean leaning over him with a muted, serious look, and if his details are off and Sam can't feel his pulse he drags him close anyway, pushes his nose into the dream-soft hair behind his ear and consoles himself with the idea that, even if he can't have what he wants, he doesn't have to be alone with it, either. He and Dean will be okay and Sam will just lose himself here, night after night. He ignores the soft sourceless laughter that follows the thought and feels himself squeezed a little tighter in the arms of this silent, tender, inadequate brother.

 

 

In a café in Lily Dale, New York, a waiter leans over and says, earnestly, "You are a virile manifestation of the divine," and Dean's mouth hangs half-open while the guy floats away from their table.

"What the hell did he say to me?" Dean says, and Sam doesn't try to hold back his grin. "Yeah, laugh it up."

The other Dean at the table is quiet, doesn't look offended or amused. He's stopped disappearing with daylight. Follows them around like a devoted, psychologically scarring shadow.

His real brother flicks his spoon against the rim of Sam's water glass. "Hey, ground control to Major Tom. Let's go over the first death. Imelda Graven."

Sam tries not to shake himself visibly. "Right, yeah." He spreads out the folder over their table, fanning out the photographs of the dead psychics. Well, probably not-psychics, but if Sam's learned nothing else it's that the supernatural can pop up anywhere, no matter if one fervently denies it.

He's getting better at operating normally, one foot in reality and one just outside it. He can get up and follow Dean without hesitation, asks questions of witnesses and smiles sympathetically at Imelda's granddaughter as he's supposed to, and at the same time he feels a semi-solid presence just at his shoulder, knows exactly where his false brother is even if he closes his eyes. He's rational enough to know that that's just because it's his brain producing the shoddy facsimile of what he wants; his rationality doesn't seem much of a defense, though, against the way the shade puts a comforting hand to the small of Sam's back when Melanie Golden gives them her reading.

"Body language," she's saying, and Sam fights not to change expression when she waves a hand between him and Dean. "Like you two—long term partners, obviously, but there's some serious tension going on here." She points at Dean. "You're worried." She points at Sam. "You're scared of something. It's not brain surgery."

Dean flicks a razor glance at Sam and he tries to shrug, play it off, but the girl's still talking and Dean has to turn back. He lets out a relieved breath and the hand on his back slides up to his shoulder, squeezes reassuringly. He inhales carefully through his nose and concentrates on the case, tries to force his mind into clean logical lines. The hand pulls away and for a second he misses it but, really, how pathetic can you get?

Dean doesn't talk on their way out of the house, on the ride back across town to the Emporium. Sam feels guilty, obscurely, and Googles the town on his phone, scrolling through the Wikipedia article and trying not to look over. It seems unfair that Melanie had been able to read the lines of Dean's body so astutely. Sam would have said he was annoyed, or angry, but all it took was her saying it to remember that Dean's fury is so often covering for something else.

The guy at the Emporium is ferrety and impressed with himself and Sam can tell Dean's itching to say something violently sarcastic, and so he steps up, takes the lead with their questions. By the time the guy pulls out the necklace, he doesn't even give Dean a quelling look when he pulls the "state's evidence" card and takes the thing right out of its overly ornate box. He strides out of the store without glancing back to see if Sam's going to follow. On Sam's other side stands a Dean giving him a calm look and he takes a deep breath, closing his eyes.

An unfamiliar hand on his wrist pulls him back to reality with uncomfortable speed. Jimmy's watching him with narrowed eyes, but before Sam can pull away Jimmy squeezes his wrist tight and then drops it. "You're conflicted," he says, and Sam's about to roll his eyes when Jimmy continues, "and you think you'll be able to get away with not choosing, but that never lasts. One foot or the other, Agent."

Sam takes the card that's pressed into his hand. When he steps out onto the sidewalk the sun feels too bright. Dean is turned slightly away, draining his flask in long swallows, and the sun sparks off the metal in a long silver glint that makes him throw his hand up in front of his eyes, but he doesn't turn away. When he finishes, Dean gives him a half-annoyed look, but he seems to have calmed down at least and hands over the necklace with a, "Well, I don't know what an Orb of Thessaly is, but apparently it's made in Taiwan," and then they're back on the case. He pushes away the rising fear in his gut and tries to concentrate.

It just figures that the case turns out to be as twisted and irritating as it can be, after that. Obsession, siblings that hate each other, half a dozen false leads and then, of course, a face-off with a ferrety asshole who has decided that his emotional problems are worth the destruction of human lives. Sam shoots him in the head. Burns the bones of the psychic-cum-murderer. He stands over the burning bed, making sure the flames don't spread beyond the apartment, and when he looks up there's a Dean watching him, arms folded across his chest. Sam studies the soft expression on what is theoretically his brother's face and thinks about how he doesn't feel bad about killing Jimmy. He's not happy about it, by any means, but he also doesn't feel guilt, or like he's achieved some kind of vengeance for the victims of his pointless little vendetta. He's just tired.

Later, in a bar two towns over that didn't offer to affirmate them with their meals, Dean sits down at their table with a double scotch and a beer and fixes Sam with a steady look. Sam tenses. On the radio, a woman's singing a low, mournful cover of _Since I've Been Loving You_ , and just as she moans _I'm about to lose my worried mind_ Dean says, "Sam."

It's that way he's got of saying his name that folds whole decades of their life into a single syllable and Sam takes the bottle of beer, swallows a few gulps to keep from responding.

It makes Dean's mouth twitch in a grin, for some reason, and he takes a sip of his scotch in response. "Okay," he says, almost to himself, and then downs the whole glass in one long swallow. He looks up at Sam with bright eyes and jerks his head back toward the single pool table, says, "You want to join?"

Sam's so thrown he shakes his head, but Dean just shrugs. "Okay," he says again, and unfolds himself from the chair. "Promise I won't take enough to start a fight."

He's gone to the table, just like that, racking up fake-awkwardly and handling the cue like a moron, and it doesn't take long for an alert local to take notice, to start to smile. Sam settles back to watch, the space in the booth next to him filled by a faithful shadow, and thinks, _They have no idea what they're dealing with_. Then again, neither does Sam.

 

The motel that night is three hundred miles further along I-90, somewhere near the Ohio-Indiana border, and Sam's so tired he can barely get out of the car. Wants to just lay there, let Dean's rehashing of the pool game and his familiar music soothe him down to sleep. He's pushed up, though, hands on his shoulders leading him onto the sidewalk, holding him steady while the door opens. He blinks to find the room clean, walls unstained, their bags already strewn over the bed closest to the door.  Two amber-shaded lamps throw gold light over everything and he drops to sit in the desk chair, fumbles his boots off with sleep-stumbling fingers. The shower clicks on, somewhere off to the left, and he lets his head fall back, decides to keep his eyes closed for just a few more minutes.

When he opens his eyes again they're bleary. There's just one lamp lit, and he swipes the sleep away with the back of his hand so the light will stop fracturing and half-blinding him. There's a Dean standing between the two beds, his back to Sam. He's wearing jeans and a thin black t-shirt with the dates of a long-past Ozzy tour gone splintered and illegible over the shoulders, and Sam doesn't think much about it when he gets to his feet, walks the few steps across the room. He doesn't telegraph the move like he would if this were his real brother; it's not like he needs to worry about startling figments of his imagination.

He isn't thinking about much when he reaches out, only that he hasn't seen this shirt in a while and he wonders why his brain dressed Dean in it, and he slips both hands under the torn-out hem, fingers sliding easy on the warm skin of Dean's hips. He steps up close, fitting his chest to Dean's shoulders with a sigh, and wishing not for the first time that they were closer in height so he could tuck his face into the curve of Dean's neck like he'd done when he was little.

Sam breathes for a second, almost ready to fall asleep again where he stands, when several things occur to him, almost at once.

For some reason, the Dean in his arms isn't moving, isn't folding himself around Sam as has become the norm. Is, in fact, one long line of tension, rigid against Sam's lax hands. The shower isn't running any more. Dean's hair, when Sam starts to turn his head, is damp against the skin of Sam's throat.

Sam swallows, and the Dean in his arms relaxes all at once, leaning his weight into Sam's grip. One hand comes up to cover Sam's where it's resting on Dean's hip, and he says, "Sam?" Quiet, but he spoke, because this is Sam's _brother_ , not any kind of silent and pliant facsimile, and Sam jerks back, feeling like he's been shot, and jams his thumb into the long-neglected scar on his palm.

"Sam?" Dean says again, and Sam squeezes his eyes closed because this is _wrong_ , he was going to be okay, he wasn't ever going to inflict the full extent of his crazy on his brother, who'd already given everything for him. It wasn't fair that he be asked to endure this, too.

There's a bright sting of pain and Dean says, "Jesus, Sam!" and wrenches Sam's hands apart. Sam opens his eyes then, can't help it, to find Dean smearing blood away from the tear he opened in the scar's thin center.

On either side of Dean stand two men, one light and one dark, and Sam tries to get his hand back, nearly prepared to lop the damn thing off, because he can't stand to see their faces now. Dean holds on tight, though, won't let him have it back. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Sam keeps saying, knowing that he's stuttering and breathless and crazy-sounding, but he can't care, he has to get himself under control. Dean's staring at him, hand still locked onto Sam's wrist, and Sam tries, "I don't know what came over me, I—"

Dean's saying his name, trying to talk over the top of him, and then he says, "It's okay, man, it's all right, you don't have anything to apologize for," an echo of something from what feels like years ago and it's still so not true, so impossibly wrong.

Sam shakes his head, tries to pull further back but he just staggers, Dean locked onto him so tight they move back the half-step together. "Sam," Dean says again, trying to demand his attention, but Lucifer's wearing a brightly satisfied grin, and Michael's baring his teeth, and then Dean curls his fingers into the front of Sam's shirt and says, "You remember," and everything stops.

Sam pulls in a breath, feels the small warmth of Dean's knuckles rise with his chest. Dean's staring at his hand, and Sam realizes that this is the first time his real brother has touched him non-casually in—a long time. He looks down and Dean immediately lets go, takes a step back.

He unfreezes his jaw with an effort. "Remembered what?" he tries. His breath is coming unsteadily.

Dean rolls his eyes, but he looks nothing like annoyed—more like he's about ten seconds from the kind of twitchy, nothing-left-to-lose despair that Sam remembers from the days after Dean made that first deal. "Come on, Sam, don't—" and, yes, there it is, but Sam doesn't understand _why_ —"Don't make this harder than it has to be."

Sam stares at him. He's standing tense and stone-jawed, defiant, but like he expects Sam to haul off and punch him any second. Dean's staring back at him, not trying to hide his face or turn away. It reminds Sam of how he used to face off against their dad when he knew he'd done something wrong—guilty and awaiting punishment, resigned to it. Sam looks down at his wrist, at the white finger marks that are just now fading, and tries to think beyond the inferno of panic clawing up his chest. _Guilty_ , he thinks, and can't figure out why that would be, but then Dean takes in a shaky breath and Sam looks up at him to find him almost desperate, and then Dean says:

"I'm sorry, man, but I didn't—I didn't know what else to do. Hell, some of those times I made it happen, didn't just wait for you to—and I know, I get that you're freaked, I would be too, but you don't know what it was like, having to watch all the time, making sure the wall didn't get cracked. And you were just my brother, you know, annoying goofy Sasquatch Sam, but it was like being in that djinn dream I told you about, like you had this whole life with some other me, like an inside joke no one would let me in on, and if I didn't go with it you'd get so confused, and then—"

He cuts himself off. Sam can't imagine what his expression is like right now, but Dean's not really looking at him, is staring through Sam's shoulder. He's crossed his arms over his chest, defensive, though he probably didn't mean to.

"You never—it was never anything I couldn't handle, not like you were doing anything I wasn't on board for. You just... expected, and I couldn't figure out how to explain that the dream was all in your head, because then you'd have asked why. I know, I get that you're pissed—" and _what_ , that's not— "But every time I saw you start to remember something."

It's not a sentence, but Dean stops like that's it, period, end of. He's shaking his head, still looking at something Sam can't see, and on either side of Dean the angels are shocked silent and still. Dean's eyes have a sheen to them that Sam's sure he's not supposed to see, but he can't look away.

"I was so scared," Dean says. "Couldn't have you leaving me again, Sammy. No matter what."

He still doesn't look up but Sam gets it, then. At last.

"You let me—" His voice is a croak past the lump in his throat. The understanding is blooming under his heart, acid filling in all the empty spots. Dean looks up at him, finally, wet-eyed and something terrible on his face. Sam gets a flash of Dean throwing his head back on a gasp, face flushed with pleasure, and for the first time he realizes that it might be real, might be something he really put there, and the urge to hit something surges through him so strong his hands clench into fists.

"Look, I get it if you need to go," says Dean, which is so just unimaginably stupidly _Dean_ that Sam grabs him by the t-shirt and pulls him close.

Dean flinches, like he really expected Sam to punch him, but all Sam can do is put his other hand on the hinge of Dean' jaw, thumb under his chin and his fingers digging into the muscle of his neck probably too hard to force Dean's face up, to let Sam look at him. Just a few inches away, Dean's eyes are huge and Sam can see every fleck of green and gold, every freckle he never grew out of. Another random memory flickers in the back of Sam's mind and he feels the fabric under his hand strain, stitches popping in Dean's collar.

"You let me," he says again, and Dean swallows. "I thought Lucifer made it all up. I didn't think any of it was real."

All those memories jumbled together, and Dean looks like he's about to apologize again, brow furrowed and his lips already parting, and Sam hauls him into what could be called a hug if it didn't feel so damn cataclysmic. He's almost hurting himself with how tight his arms are around Dean, is sure it's going to end with one or both of them bruised, and he doesn't care. He also doesn't care that he's too tall for it and presses his face down into the exposed smooth skin of Dean's neck. Dean's breath escapes on a gasp and Sam can feel himself shaking, but it's distant, like the universe has spun on without him and he's one step outside of time. Somewhere, Dean's hands slide up his back, arms fold over his ribs, which heave with the breaths he's trying to take. He wants to revel in that knowledge—that they're real, that this isn't some Hell-dream, that he can't sense a single illusion in the room—but it's too much. He's been so scared for so long and it turns out it was for no reason at all, and Dean's whispering, "It's okay, Sammy, I've got you." Sam feels himself led, hands urging him back onto a bed.

It's too much like what the fake had done and he grabs blindly at warm fabric, catches skin. "Dean," he says, and forces his eyes open because he has to check, and through splintery wet light his brother is right there with him, putting a hand to his face and wiping a thumb over his cheek.

"It's me," Dean says, and of course. Of course it is. Sam closes his eyes and pulls, and warm weight settles right there next to him, a hand sliding into his hair and urging his face back into the crook of Dean's neck. The skin there is wet and smells of salt, which doesn't make sense, but it doesn't matter because he can push his hand under Dean's shirt and spread it over the scarred expanse of his back, can fist into the old thin shirt and feel a heartbeat thudding with warm, bloody life. There's a hard callus on the thumb sliding over his neck and Dean's two-day stubble is sharp against Sam's temple and the room is empty of angels, and he's still shaking, but there's a voice whispering reassurance into the mess of his hair and for once in what feels like millennia he knows exactly whose it is.

 

 

When Sam wakes up, it takes him a solid minute to remember that the world has changed. There's light filtering in through his closed eyelids, but the room is cool—morning, then. He shifts, and the warm chest he's pillowing his cheek on moves in a deep breath. He turns his face into the motion, idly tuning his hearing in to hear the solid beat of a heart, and it's when he's wondering why he's still wearing so many clothes that it catches up to him and his eyes slam open.

He feels his whole body go rigid, but Dean doesn't stir, and when Sam eases his head up he finds his brother still asleep, face turned away from Sam on the pillow. One arm is slung behind Sam's neck, but Dean's sleeping deeply enough that when Sam eases back it falls down to the mattress without any fuss. He backs off the bed on his knees, watching Dean for any sign of awareness, but when he slides off the mattress Dean only turns onto his side, curls around the warm spot Sam left.

Sam drags a hand over his face, grimacing at the salt-stickiness, the dried snot. There's a patch on Dean's t-shirt that looks stiff, too, on the collar and chest, and he can feel the embarrassed flush creeping up his neck just looking at it, remembering. He remembers everything, in fact, and the flush spreads through his whole body in an instant, sweat prickling under his clothes. He turns on his heel and goes into the bathroom, turns the shower on as hot as it will go. He takes a leak while it heats, strips his clothes and leaves them in an untidy pile on the yellow linoleum. When he steps into the tub he leans down and puts his face directly into the spray, closes his eyes and embraces the almost-scorch of the water, the hot insistent pressure against his eyelids and mouth.

It does nothing to wash away the image of Dean's desperate, despairing face, not that Sam was really expecting it to. Now that the initial, world-spinning revelations have passed, he can start to parse what was said, what Dean had confessed when Sam hadn't been able to figure out why he looked so guilty. Remembering it makes his breath come faster, even now, but if he really concentrates he can recall every word, every expression on Dean's face, and even if he gets _why_ now, he still doesn't know what, exactly, happened.

 _You never—_ Dean had started to say, and Sam can fill in the awful word that goes there. He guesses he has to believe it, if only because of Dean's fervency. He scrapes his hands through the mass of his wet hair, fumbles blind for the bottle on the little windowsill and pops the lid. The smell of mint fills the close, foggy space, and it makes him think of pressing his nose just behind Dean's ear, breathing in the familiarity of him. It's a relief, he supposes, that he didn't physically force anything, but if he doesn't know what happened he can't trust Dean's declaration that he was on board, not completely. More than anything, his brain just will not construct a version of his brother that would let Sam maul him without any kind of protest, that would just go along and pretend that everything was okay.

By the time he turns off the shower the room is so dense with steam it's a little hard to breathe, even despite the cracked doorway. He towels off, slow, and runs his fingers through his hair to keep it off his face, and then stares at the pile of clothes on the floor. If this were yesterday, he'd ignore them, walk right out into the room with his towel around his waist and get a clean outfit from his bag. There's a new awareness, though, now—and he realizes suddenly that Dean must have had it too, this whole time, holding on to a secret that Sam should have shared and trying to act like they were normal, just two brothers who'd never had much of a sense of personal space. It makes Sam want to sink down to the edge of the tub and hide his face in his hands, because the level of their fucked-up-ness is reaching truly absurd levels. The whole time he thought he was burying his sickness for Dean, Dean was censoring their lives for him. The whole thing is like an Austen novel, albeit one gone horribly, horribly wrong.

He wraps the towel around his waist. Squares his shoulders. He steps over the pile of clothes and he doesn't know what he's going to find outside the door, but he has determined one thing: whatever happens, he isn't going to hurt his brother.

That the room is empty when he comes out is a bit of an anticlimax. There's a moment of panic, of course there is, and he thinks for a second that between them they've ruined everything—but then he sees the little notepad that comes with the room propped up on Dean's abandoned pillow.

 _Coffee & food_, read Dean's neat capitals. _Back soon_.

He lets out a breath and wipes a hand over his face. In the corner, Lucifer and Michael are sitting on the desk and watching him, but he can ignore them. He fishes through his bag and pulls out a pair of briefs, yanks them on under the towel even if the only people to see are imaginary. He's going to figure this out, one way or another. All he needs is a little time, and his brother.

 

Of course, all the best intentions in the world do nothing if Dean won't fucking _talk_.

Sam's sitting on the unused bed, long dressed and starting to worry by the time Dean gets back, coffee carrier in one hand and doughnuts in the other. "Hey," Dean says, curt, and Sam doesn't miss the way his eyes flick over Sam's body, checking to make sure he's all in one piece before resolutely turning away. "We should get on the road. You packed?"

The answer's obviously yes. Sam says, "Dean," trying to convey what he needs in the syllable, but Dean just glances at him once, nothing in his face.

"Check-out's in fifteen minutes and I can't afford the extra day if we don't get our keys back to Monobrow at the front desk in time," Dean says. "Come on, you can have your coffee in the car."

Sam opens his mouth, then closes it again. Lucifer's watching their conversation with all the intensity of a fan at Wimbledon, eyes darting back and forth. "Where are we headed?" Sam says, finally.

Dean's shoulders relax, minutely, where he's stuffing their shotguns into his duffel. It makes something in Sam's stomach go small, ashamed and hot. "Not sure yet. Might have a line on a haunted theater in Champaign."

Sam nods, looks down at the bedspread. He's fisting his hand in the polyester material and forces himself to let go, stretches out his aching fingers.

"Hey," Dean says, and Sam looks up find Dean looking back at him, at least, expression ever-so-slightly softened. "I just—I need to get out of this room. Okay?"

His throat's tight, but he nods again. When Dean slings his bags over his shoulder and heads out the door, Sam follows, holding the coffee carrier in one hand. It doesn't shake.

Dean drives normally, tunes in to the local classic rock station and taps his thumb on the wheel to whatever comes on. Sam drinks his coffee, done just how he likes it, and doesn't even pretend that he's not staring at Dean. The angels are sitting in the backseat, which is too bad, but they aren't talking just as Sam and Dean aren't. Sam keeps taking in steadying breaths, keeps half-opening his mouth, but Dean doesn't look over, doesn't acknowledge Sam at all, the line of his back rigid even if he appears to be slumped at ease, and after an hour Sam stops trying.

They stop in Paxton for lunch, gas, and the Illinois papers, and Dean still isn't talking beyond the basics—a _pass the salt, will you?_ makes Sam waver between wanting to cry and wanting to lunge across the table and punch him, and the tangle in his chest is so awful he just hands over the salt shaker in silence. They've had fits of the silent treatment before, from one or both of them, and he's always known it was childish but sometimes it seemed easier not to talk, to wait until the hurt festered enough to come exploding out on its own. This time, though, everything they're not saying has been building up for so long it feels like poison.

He watches Dean flick through the obituaries in the News-Gazette. Sam still doesn't know when it started, when he first made Dean—was it immediate, when he first got his soul back? Or did it take longer, did he act normal for a while before he caught Dean off-guard? Did he yank him in and kiss him, after a hunt, or did he just crawl into bed and _expect_ , as Dean had so carefully put it? A series of Technicolor-bright images accompany that thought and he feels himself flush, looks down at his half-eaten pasta salad to hide it. If Dean would just talk to him—

"You coming?" Dean says.

Sam straightens up. Dean has tucked some bills under his empty plate, is waiting with his head cocked. "Yeah," Sam says, and Dean nods, unfolds himself from the booth and heads straight out the door with a cheerful chime of the bell. Sam grits his teeth and follows, but he stops on the sidewalk outside, watches Dean walk through the near-empty parking lot toward the Impala. He's still stiff, moving with a kind of forced nonchalance that would fool almost everyone. It's how Dean acts when he's hurt, but also how he behaves when he's done something he knows Sam is going to be pissed at him for and is just waiting for the fight to start. Something Sam saw a lot in those reckless days before Dean went to Hell, but right now it doesn't make sense, unless—

Oh.

"Dude, come on," Dean says, and Sam feels his body surge into motion, sending him across the asphalt to the passenger seat without any real direction from his brain. _Guilty_ , he remembers, and it's like something unlocks in his head. He watches Dean's profile as he backs out of the parking space, as he puts them back on to I-57 and its nonexistent afternoon traffic. _I made it happen_ , he'd said, and Sam didn't know what that meant exactly, but whatever it was it made Dean an active participant, meant he hadn't just lain there and thought of Kansas, and like the most clichéd image of light bursting through clouds, understanding dawns.

He waits until Dean's nowhere near another car before he says, "I'm not mad at you."

Sure enough, the car jerks. Not much, but Dean gets both hands on the wheel anyway. "Jesus," he says, flicking a glance across the seat.

"I'm not," Sam repeats. He turns to face the windshield, looking out at the long, straight highway, the farms passing on either side. "It's not your fault."

In his peripheral vision he can see that Dean's looking straight ahead just as he is, hands tight on the wheel. Sam thinks, for a second, that he's going to say something, but when he risks a glance he sees that Dean's jaw is locked so tense it looks like he's going to break a tooth. Sam looks out his window instead, catches glimpses of long-dead stalks of corn, gone yellow with the end of the harvest.

"No matter what happened, I'm not going to blame you," he says. He's a little impressed with himself for how calm he sounds. "So you should get over your crap and talk to me, because otherwise we're just going to keep sitting here forever in silence."

He keeps his face turned away. He hears Dean inhale and exhale shakily through his nose, but a good thirty seconds pass before he says, finally, "Not sure I'm ever going to be drunk enough for that conversation, Sam."

Sam closes his eyes. "We'll see how it goes," he says, and then it's quiet again.

 

Dean drives right past Champaign. They end up on the 70, heading west, through Illinois into Missouri for no reason Sam can decipher. They finally stop in Odessa, just east of Kansas City and an uncomfortably short seventy-five miles to Lawrence, and Dean pulls off the highway and immediately finds the town's only motel. Sam's getting their bags out of the trunk in front of the single square building when Dean returns from the office and pushes a key into his hand.

"You're in room eight," Dean says, and for a second Sam doesn't get it. Dean reaches around him and picks up his duffel while Sam stares at the little bronze key, and his face when Sam looks up isn't exactly closed-off, but it's getting there.

"Dean—"

"Just—go to your room, all right?" Dean says, and then winces with Sam at how television-parent he sounds. He slings his bag onto his shoulder and jerks his head at the grey, lifeless building. "I'm in five. They don't have wifi, so sorry about that. I'll see you in the morning."

With that, he disappears into the room. The door seems to close very loudly in the silence of the parking lot. Sam closes the Impala's trunk and heads for room eight, as ordered. There are no other cars in the lot and Sam wonders if Dean had to specify non-adjacent rooms to whoever was at the front desk, if they looked at him oddly or if he got defensive when they asked why. When he opens up the door he's hit with the musty smell, but it's so strange to see a single queen bed that he barely notices the shabby accommodations. He locks the door behind him and slides the chain into place, and it's only when he's starting to set up the room that he realizes he took the bag with Dean's shotgun instead of his own and he doesn't have any salt at all, and then he sits down very abruptly on the bed and puts his head in his hands.

He doesn't feel better after a shower. He lies on his back on the itchy floral bedspread and stares at the ceiling for a long time, listens to all the conspicuous silence around him. There's a television in the corner, but he doesn't turn it on. After a while, he hauls himself upright and yanks his backpack onto the bed. He fishes out a legal pad, and a good blue pen, and puts his shoulders against the wooden headboard as he starts to write. Lucifer is leaning against the ancient desk, and Michael's standing vigilant beside the curtained window, and someone who is very much not his brother is sitting on the end of the bed, watching him, but he ignores them handily, because what he's doing now is working a case.

He's surprised at himself for taking so long to think about it like that, but that's exactly what this is. He can't remember everything clearly or even in order, his mind a mess if he tries, but he's excellent with logic and organization, and now he has a neat pair of columns on his page with the headers _cage_ and _wall_. He twirls the pen between his fingers and leans his head back against the headboard, letting his mind settle. He takes a deep breath in and thinks, _Dean_ , and an image of Dean laughing as Sam tackles him into the grass next the Impala flits behind his eyes. He almost flinches from how clear the scene is, how carefree Dean looks when Sam pins his wrists on either side of his head and leans in, Dean's mouth still stretched into a smile when Sam kisses him.

He opens his eyes and looks at the white wall in front of him, toward where he knows his real brother is failing to sleep, and then writes, neatly, _on ground by car, handjob,_ in the cage's column, and then waits for the next memory to arrive.

 

A knock on his door wakes him at nine. "Up and at 'em, Sammy," he hears, and bolts up in bed. The legal pad's slightly crumpled from the weight of his arm, but the list is still long—very long, and legible. He's got blue ink smeared all over the side of his hand and he's scrubbing it over his jeans when Dean says, "Come on, I think there's a Starbucks a few towns over, I'll buy you a latte."

Pretending to be normal again, then. Sam rolls to his feet and jerks the door open, but Dean's already back at the car, stuffing his bag into the trunk. It's cold, and the morning light is thin and white, clouds hovering on the horizon. Dean glances at him, then away. "Come on, this place sucks. Let's get going."

He throws his duffel into the trunk and brings his backpack into the front seat with them, keeps the legal pad under his arm. Dean flicks a look at it, but he doesn't meet Sam's eyes, and then they're on the road, moving west away from the sun.

"I called Bobby to see if he'd heard anything," Dean says, after they're a few miles down the road. His voice is flat, straining for ease but not finding it. "Put me on to possible witch activity down in Springdale, Arkansas. Might be nothing, but I said we'd check it out."

"Fine." It comes out sharper than he'd intended and he sees Dean's hand clench on the wheel, but he's tired of this.

He has no right to be mad, and he isn't really. Whatever's happened between them is entirely on him, no matter what Dean thinks, because he understands how his brother operates. If there's a chance to save Sam, Dean will take it, and damn the consequences. It's not something he can find it in himself to blame Dean for, anymore, because no matter how furious he'd been at Dean's presumption when he'd sold his soul the first time around, he fully understands the impulse. Throwing himself into a cage with the archangels had been about saving the world, sure, but when it came down to it there was only one person he'd really wanted to save.

The consequences this time aren't even that bad, really. No apocalypse forthcoming, for one thing. Sam's sense of scale has shifted pretty dramatically. He isn't going to leave Dean and isn't going to let Dean leave him, no matter what Dean thinks he deserves as punishment, and if there is a way for them to live together after this Sam is going to find it. They've lived through much worse.

"So, are you ready to talk yet?" he says.

Dean doesn't jerk the car off the road, at least. He doesn't look over at Sam, either, shifting smoothly to pull onto I-49 and keep them moving south. "What do you want me to say?"

"At this point? Literally anything." A smirk curls Dean's mouth and Sam rolls his eyes, keeps talking before Dean can say something asinine about the weather or the Yankees. "At least tell me—I didn't hurt you, right?"

That startles a wide-eyed look from him and he wraps both hands tight over the wheel at ten and two, knuckles white-yellow as they've been so often lately. "Jesus _Christ_." He sounds like he's going to be ill. "No."

Almost thirty years' experience tell him that's all that will be forthcoming, from the look on Dean's face. He taps his fingers on the legal pad in his lap, nodding, but doesn't try to respond. He hadn't thought so, couldn't recall a single moment of Dean protesting, of being rough, but it's good to have the confirmation.

They drive in silence again after that, and if it isn't exactly comfortable it's not the gut-twisting tension of the day before, either. Sam looks out the window as the moderate bustle of Harrisonville gives way to green-lined highway, the trees reluctant to give up their leaves in this mild, encroaching winter.

He keeps his hand splayed over the yellow pad on his thigh and at one point he sees Dean glance over, but he doesn't ask. Sam doesn't look down, doesn't need to read it over again, but he can feel the faint indents his pen made on the paper. Having it written out like this—it's not even the full expanse of memories, not even half of what happened. There are the things that happened while he was soulless, and there are all those hours and years of Lucifer playing with him, seeing how far he could be stretched. There are the times his whole reason for being had revolved around Lucifer's love, and he knows he's going to have to tell Dean about that, too, at some point. It's not like those hundreds of fake lives with Dean were the only thing he'd had in the cage, but—and he can already imagine Dean rolling his eyes at this—they're the only thing worth remembering.

They're in Springdale by lunchtime. The evidence of 'possible witch activity' Bobby had heard about is tenuous at best, but they're Winchesters and they do their duty—hit up the local newspaper for details on the mysterious death, check the new age crystal store that opened in the miniature downtown. The woman who runs it seems mostly dippy and very sure that the fact that Dean is an Aquarius means he will fit in beautifully with the new Wiccan group she's trying to start in town. The fact that she immediately guesses that Sam is a Virgo and seems unfazed to learn that she's wrong only confirms Sam's suspicion that, if there is any witchcraft happening, it seems to be on a truly unimpressive scale.

They're in a little restaurant on the way out of town when Dean finishes his phone call with the county coroner and then claps his cell closed with a sigh. "Well, this was definitely a waste of time. That guy who died, perfectly healthy on his morning run? Rat poison."

Sam smiles briefly at the waitress when she refreshes his coffee. "Not exactly our kind of thing."

"No." Dean takes a bite of his neglected chicken-fried steak, but apparently the gravy has gone cold and he pushes the plate away with a grimace. "Especially because it turns out Endora didn't even know him, she knew his sister. Distantly. And probably couldn't hoodoo her way out of a paper bag, much less gank a dude long-distance."

Dean pushes a few bills under his own mug and then cracks his neck. He looks tired, kind of, though it's only seven o'clock and the day wasn't exactly grueling.

"You want to head out?" Sam says. "Saw an ad in the paper, there's a motel by the university down in Fayetteville that's got a deal on rooms."

"Good, I'm running low on cash," Dean says, and stands. "Might have to go on another bar run here in a few days."

Sam follows him to the Impala. This is how it's been all day: mundane, stupid conversation, skimming over the surface so they don't have to touch the mess beneath. He folds himself into the passenger side and the legal pad is still between them, its long list legible even in the dim light from the restaurant's windows, but Dean doesn't glance down. He gives brief directions to the motel and settles into his seat, watches the little town pass by. These people are safe at least for now, and it's a relief, because he doesn't think he could have stood another day of waiting.

When Dean walks into the neatly appointed motel office Sam follows him, and when the woman at the desk smiles politely at them and asks the question Sam cuts smoothly over Dean's intake of breath and says, "One room, please."

Dean turns around and walks right back out the office door.

The woman looks a little startled, but tries to hide it. "King or two queens?"

Sam pauses, long enough for the woman to frown, but really—it wouldn't be fair.

Dean's back behind the wheel when Sam comes out, their key in hand. He slides back into his seat, tries not to notice the abrupt increase in tension. "Room 210," he says, "take a right past the pool."

They unload the bags together, as usual, and Sam follows Dean up the concrete stairs, watching the rigid line of his back, the jerky way he shoves the key into the lock and pushes into the room. When the light flips on and Dean sees the two beds he doesn't relax, as Sam was halfway expecting, but he does drop his duffel onto the mattress nearer the door. He says, "Better than the last place, huh?"

He's still striving for normal. Sam drops his own duffel on the floor, parks his backpack on the desk and wrenches it open.

"Okay, this is what we're doing now," he starts, and pulls out a fifth of whiskey.

"What—" When Sam glances over his shoulder, Dean's eyes cut away and he opens up his bag, takes out the salt canister. "Thought you didn't approve of the liquid diet, Sammy. I'm gonna be spoiled."

It is a good bottle, which for them means it cost more than twenty dollars. Sam slides it over the desk and the glass scrapes loudly against the thin oak veneer. "Yeah, well, I've got a plan. This was the only way I could think of to get you to go along with it."

"Yeah, I don't think so."

Sam, collecting the two paper-covered glasses from next to the sink, rolls his eyes. When he comes back into the room Dean has just finished salting the door, the set of his shoulders and jaw obstinate in that way Sam's been seeing since before he could walk. Unfortunate for Dean that Sam's always been able to out-maneuver his stubbornness.

"Look, you said you needed to be drunk, right?" Dean freezes, halfway through shrugging out of his jacket. "I'm just doing what I've got to do."

Dean drops the jacket on top of his bag with a heavy thump and then rubs the back of his neck. He still isn't looking at Sam, but this room is full of clean bright light and Sam's watching him, because he isn't going to guess at the expressions on his face. Dean says, "I don't know if this is what you've gotta do, Sam," and there's a flicker of a smile, something that could get them both off the hook if Sam let it.

He half-fills Dean's glass and holds it out. "Yeah, I do. Come on, drink up."

Dean doesn't take it, sits with a sigh on the edge of the mattress. "Sam." For a second, that seems to be all that's forthcoming as Dean's head drops and he gathers in a slow breath before fixing Sam with a flat, calm look. "I'm sorry. All right? I don't know what else you want me to say."

It's not fair. Sam picks up the bottle and puts both it and the glass on the table between the two beds, golden liquid sloshing against the side with enough force that his fingers are splashed. It's not fair that Dean sound so defeated, when Sam could never blame him, because—

He picks the glass back up and takes a swallow, a dirty peat-shot shock that burns right through his sinuses, and then he grabs the legal pad and throws it into Dean's lap. Dean catches it with a rustle of paper, probably on reflex, and Sam drops down to the other mattress with a weird, shaky feeling stripping all the strength from his legs.

"That's what's in my head," he says. Dean's looking at him with narrowed eyes. He's got both hands on the notepad and for a crazy second Sam wants to lean forward, snatch it back and burn the damn thing, but this is what they need. "Look."

Dean watches him for another moment and Sam has to look away, runs his tongue along his teeth to catch the dark taste of the whiskey. The room's nicer than they're used to but there are no distractions, either; the pale walls and clean blue bedspreads and framed grayscale lakes do nothing to ease the way he feels unmoored, like a piece of armor has cracked away and left him flayed, all his tender spots left open for the taking.

"Jesus," Dean mutters, and Sam looks back in time to catch him actually looking at the pad, reading it at last. "Jesus," he says, louder, and it's maybe appalled, or ill, and in a way it's liberating for Sam, to finally have the dark underbelly of his thoughts bared.

"You wouldn't tell me what I'd done," he says. He makes himself shrug when Dean turns wide eyes on him. "Had to try to figure it out myself."

Dean's hand is splayed over the yellow paper while he searches Sam's face, his fingers spread out like they're trying to keep the words in place. After a few seconds he looks back down and he doesn't move his hand, but he's still staring at the list. Some perverse instinct makes Sam want to ask what it is that's caught his eye—maybe the _green motel room, fingers + oral_ , or perhaps the time Sam's pretty sure actually happened, _afternoon, backseat, frottage_.

"Do you get it?" he says, instead. Dean doesn't look up. "You didn't do this to me. I'm not sitting here afraid of you, or disgusted, or—I don't know, whatever it is you think I'm thinking that's got you freaking out on me."

"I'm not freaking out," Dean mutters automatically, which is so untrue Sam doesn't even bother to refute it.

"This is the stuff I remember," he says, with a jab of his finger at the legal pad. "I mean, God, Dean, you should be freaking out, I'm the one who made you—"

"No." It's loud enough that Sam cuts himself off, feels his teeth snap together. Dean does look up at him, mouth a hard line. "Screw that, Sam. You didn't make me do anything, don't make it sound like I'm some kind of victim, or something. That's not how it was."

"But I can't know that, Dean!" Dean blinks, shakes his head, and Sam leans forward into the space between the two beds. "How can I, if you won't tell me what really happened?" He gestures at the list again, still clutched tight in Dean's hand. "Every single thing on that list felt real. It was real, to me. That's why I can't figure it out. Hell, I don't even know how many times we—"

He can't make himself finish but Dean flinches anyway. "What does it matter?"

It's low, beaten. All of the urgency drains out of Sam in a second, leaves him feeling empty-handed and like he needs to fold Dean into his arms, never let go. "It matters," he finally says, with a voice that cracks despite his best effort.

Dean's silent, for a few seconds, and then holds out one hand, flicks his fingers in a _give it here_ gesture. Sam passes over the glass of whiskey he'd forgotten, watches while Dean drains the glass in two quick swallows. He doesn't look away from how Dean swipes his tongue over his lower lip, after, or how his teeth drag over and leave just the faintest shine of wet. The legal pad slides to the ground when Dean leans over to grab the whiskey bottle and refills the glass. He hands the bottle, now significantly lighter, back to Sam, who takes it for lack of anything better to do.

This time Dean takes a much smaller sip. "Six times."

Sam blinks. "What?"

"It was six times," Dean repeats, and takes another swallow. He looks down at the whiskey, at the way it sloshes back and forth when he swirls the glass between his fingers.

Sam's mouth is dry. He unscrews the cap off the bottle and takes a gulp, and it absolutely does not help. His lips buzz when he licks them clean. "Tell me."

 

Even with Dean's awkward cooperation, the story still comes out in fits and starts. Dean sits on his bed and Sam sits on his, and Dean doesn't look at him once, talks to the navy blue carpet between his boots and to the glass in his hand. How Sam was fine, almost all the time. How, at first, Dean hadn't thought a single thing was wrong.

The djinn-dream, Sam realizes, was an excellent metaphor. Now that he has all the pieces of the puzzle, it's obvious how being with Dean then would have made Sam think about the last times he was with Dean—all those memories implanted in his head in the cage swirling together to make a Sam who saw Dean as a brother, a friend, and as something else entirely.

"It wasn't like you were climbing in to bed with me every night, or anything," Dean's saying, and Sam shudders at the image of that, the knowledge he has of that. "But you kept having these nightmares, about stuff you shouldn't have had in your head, and when I realized all you needed was a little light and someone to hold on to, it just seemed—I don't know. Easier."

Dean rolls the glass between his hands. Sam's own hands are clenched tight between his knees, because he's afraid if they weren't they'd be shaking.

"It's like—there were three Sams, I guess. There was you, just plain dorky little brother. Then there was this version that scared the crap out of me, where you went all quiet and looked like you were trying to remember stuff. I didn't know if it was about the year you were soulless or about the cage or what, but I couldn't stand it. And then there was... this other version. I mean, you still acted like you, almost all the time, it was just that—well. You know."

Yes. Sam knows. He takes in a long breath through his nose. It's getting cold in the room, because neither of them has turned on the heater by the door, but he doesn't think he can move.

"Nothing happened, for a long time. Weeks." Dean glances up and Sam doesn't pretend he hasn't been staring. Dean's eyes are bright and his mouth quirks at whatever expression is on Sam's face before he looks down again. "Any time you started to—I just said I was tired or something, and then we'd just sleep. No big deal. Although, Sam, I have to say," and there's a fragile sliver of levity, at last, when Dean flashes another look at him, "I never knew you were such a cuddler."

"Shut up," he says, faintly. Dean's mouth twitches into a grin, if only for a second. He knows the sensation of curling around Dean's back in the dark, sliding his arm just below Dean's and fitting a hand over his heart. Then, he says, "What happened?"

Dean does him the service of understanding immediately, doesn't pretend like he doesn't know what Sam's asking. He runs his fingers under the collar of his henley. "It was the hunt where Rufus almost died. That thing with Eve's new monster, when Samuel showed up. Remember?"

He does, sort of. He remembers shooting Gwen clearly, with a vein of grief he hadn't felt at the time because he hadn't thought he knew her. There's also a moment of Samuel watching him, hostile, and Dean pulling at his arm, dragging him out of the room.

"Christ, that freaked me out. You'd been with him for a year and I thought the wall was going to come down that night, no matter what I did. Had to distract you somehow."

There's a pause, and then Dean shrugs. The memory is unfolding, somewhere in the back of Sam's head, and he lets out a careful breath. "You kissed me."

Dean cuts a look at him, and then rolls his eyes. "Technically," he says, standing, "you kissed me."

Standing in the half-dark, Dean's hand curled around his wrist and the other wrapped tight in his jacket, looking up at him with eyes blown out to the thinnest ring of green, and it had seemed so reasonable to lean down, to catch the dry seam of his lips with his. It had seemed chaste, no tongue, just Sam trying for comfort even if he couldn't understand what was wrong. He hadn't been able to figure out why Dean seemed even more shaken, after.

"It was that night," Dean says. For some reason, as he plows through the story he seems more and more sanguine. He's standing at the window, looking out through the grey curtains at the turquoise-lit pool. Sam shifts his hands to the edge of the mattress, curls his fingers in tight. "When I got you back to the motel you were right on the edge and you kept asking questions about Samuel, about why he knew you, and then you stopped talking at all."

He doesn't continue, but Sam doesn't really expect him to. He remembers, now. He'd pressed Dean against the wall, carried him to the bed like a damn caveman, reveled in the feel of all that skin, how Dean had been shaking, like—and his stomach turns over—like it was his first time.

"Dean," he says. Dean remains at the window for a second before he turns around. He looks resigned. "Tell me what happened the other times."

 

Dean falls asleep, eventually. Sam doesn't. He stares up at the ceiling and wonders how it is that they keep stumbling down these same paths, hairpin turns coming up in the dark that they know are there but never seem to see until they're hurtling off the edge of the cliff. Their father dies and their mother makes a deal; their mother dies and their father sells his life as though it's going to make up for the cost of hers. The loss of Sam leads to Dean's insane bargain, and the loss of Dean spins Sam down into bloody depths that only the experience of the cage has finally scoured from him. In the end it almost seems like a logical progression: Sam's life is in danger, and so Dean will do what it takes. Even if it means giving up a part of himself. Maybe especially then.

The lights in the pool are still on, sending wavering lines of light over the ceiling. Sam tucks his hand behind his head and tracks the movement, tries not to give in to the urge to turn over and stare at his brother. Dean had given him only the barest detail, just enough to trigger sufficient memory in Sam that he could differentiate those six inconceivable encounters from all the hundreds in his mind. Dean had crested some internal barrier in his own head, had lost all embarrassment as he gave the sparest information: when, where, whether Sam had initiated or if Dean had felt the need to, to save Sam from a breach in the wall.

Sam shifts on the mattress. If he thinks about it, he can build out the rest of the memories from the things Dean told him, and it's making the feelings swirling in the base of his gut that much more complicated. What he'd remembered at Rufus' cabin, when he'd gone to his knees for Dean: it turned out that that had been true, even if Dean hadn't described it in quite the same detail as Sam remembered. It had been just before they got the phoenix ash to kill Eve and Sam had been quiet all day, and Dean had gotten more and more worried until he'd "flipped the switch," as he put it, and by the time they got to the motel Sam had been half out of his head with wanting him. Not hard to believe.

What's more difficult to fathom is the end of the memory. Dean's hand on him, the way he'd tilted up for a kiss, it wasn't—Sam had known Dean wasn't just martyring himself to the whole situation, but he hadn't thought his brother would ever—

He blows out a frustrated breath. He can't even finish the sentence in his own head. He sits up in bed, swings his legs over the side of the mattress.

"Can't sleep?" he hears, quiet.

When he looks, there's a faint gleam of Dean's eyes, watching him from the other bed.

He opens his mouth, but there's nothing to say. He shakes his head, instead.

It's just after two in the morning, when Sam glances at the clock, and he pushes his hands through his hair. It's still cold, and he thinks about walking over to mess with the heating unit under the window.

Dean shifts, on the other mattress, and Sam looks up again to see that he's rolled onto his back, created a space at his side. The light from outside is so dim Sam can't make out his expression, but he can still see how Dean doesn't flinch when Sam stands up, when he takes the step separating their two beds. He thinks about all those nights, all those warm mornings, but even so when he eases down to sit on the edge of Dean's mattress he's expecting—he doesn't even know what he's expecting. Certainly not for Dean to twitch the blanket down, and then for him to shift so he's presenting his back to Sam.

That makes it easier to slip under the covers, to settle in beside his brother. He lays still for a second, listening to Dean breathe, and then lets himself tilt, rolls his weight onto one shoulder and tucks in behind Dean. He's just in boxers and t-shirt, as is Dean, and when his knee brushes the back of Dean's calf there's a twitch from Dean, and then a short, breathy laugh.

"Your leg's cold, man," Dean mumbles, and Sam squeezes his eyes shut, presses his forehead to the smooth plane of Dean's shoulder with a whisper of apology, and he can feel Dean's heart beating fast but he only says, "Just don't think you're hogging all the covers, Sasquatch."

"Okay," Sam manages.

He keeps his eyes closed, listens to Dean's careful, slow breaths. His fingers curl into the loose waist of Dean's t-shirt, gripping a body-warm fistful of cotton, and he inhales the sleep-smell, the bone-deep, comfortable intimacy of it. It's one of those things Lucifer had given him carelessly, incidental to what should have been more important, and it's only now he realizes: it was this that he missed. He breathes carefully, tries to slow down his heart rate, and relaxes while the air between them grows warmer.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crap, I just missed wincest day in my time zone. ...Well, it's still wincest day in Hawaii, so I'll take it. This, btw, is where most of the E rating is going to be earned. Just sayin'.

His dreams are blurry, insubstantial. He wakes with the blanket tugged up around his ears and the bed empty, the room full of thin grey light. He blinks at the clock on the bedside table, thinking that it must be just before dawn, but it's 10:06, the morning already half-gone.

"Thought you were going to sleep all day," he hears.

He shifts up onto one elbow, pulls his hand over his face. Dean's over at the counter on the other wall. He's still wearing just those boxer-briefs and a t-shirt, slanting a look at Sam over his shoulder before he turns his attention back to the little two-cup coffee pot. Sam rakes his eyes over him, over his long bare legs and the place where his shirt is crumpled from Sam's grip. When he sits up, his hand skates over the other side of the bed and it's still warm, which means Dean's only been up for five, ten minutes, and something in Sam's stomach unfurls.

There's a loud gurgle and then a hiss from the percolator, and Dean makes a little _hah_ of satisfaction, leans a hip up against the counter. As is a strange paradox with motels, this room is considerably nicer than they're used to, but also considerably smaller, and though Dean's as far from Sam as it's possible to be he's still only about fifteen feet away. It'd be just a few quick steps to be in his space, to put his arms around him and ask for—well. Anything. Dean's not looking his way, but he doesn't look tense, either, and Sam puts his back to the headboard, watches him.

Outside, the day threatens rain, heavy grey clouds sitting low in the sky and filtering the color out of the world. The percolator hisses again and Dean pours out the coffee into the two paper cups, leaves Sam's on the counter and walks over to the window. In the grey light he's washed out to pale, something quiet in his face that Sam can't read, and then he lifts his face up the clouds, closes his eyes. The silence between them doesn't feel oppressive, for once, and Sam thinks that, if it comes to it, this is the way he wants to remember his brother. Not grinning and wild, not slouched behind the wheel of the Impala, not writhing in one of Sam's fevered dreams. Like this: sipping at a cup of coffee and then looking off at something Sam can't see, eyes quiet. Mouth soft. Like there's no such thing as angels or Leviathan or Hell, only this grey morning, this dim room.

When he gets out of the shower he pads out into the main room in his towel and Dean's sitting on the bed they shared, jeans on and working on a second cup of coffee. Sam dresses with his back turned slightly away, as he always has, and as he's pulling a t-shirt over his wet hair Dean clears his throat and says, "So, no hunt today."

He turns around. Dean meets his eyes without compunction, takes a sip of his coffee. Sam wonders if he averted his eyes while Sam tugged on his jeans, if he watched. There's not a hint of either in Dean's face. Belatedly, he says, "Nothing in the papers?"

Dean shrugs. "We missed checkout. No sense wasting the extra night if we're already going to have to pay for it." He stands, shrugs on an old red-checked flannel shirt over his grey tee, eyes steady on Sam. "Don't think the Leviathan will come running down to Arkansas just because John Wilson is spending two nights instead of one."

Sam sits on the edge of the abandoned bed, socks in hand. He tries not to put any inflection in his voice when he says, "So. What do you want to do?"

 

There's a shopping center with a gun store a few miles from their motel where they restock on bullets and shotgun shells, and then a small local grocery where they buy ten pounds of various salt grades and ignore the cashier's bewildered look as they have all their lives. Dean disappears for a few minutes while Sam's combing through the jewelry at the pawn shop, looking for anything that might have a tendril of magic clinging to it, and then reappears grinning in a reddish leather jacket that fits him like a glove. Sam swallows at the sight of it and doesn't ask how much it cost, because it makes Dean's skin gold and his eyes a bright, shocking green. He wonders if Dean knows the effect it has and then decides, watching Dean smile at the middle-aged woman behind the counter as she colors and rings him up, that of course he does.

They leave the little strip mall with their purchases and stow them in the car, and they're not really talking. Things have been tense between them all morning, but not in a way Sam recognizes. Silence falls, often, but it doesn't curdle through Sam's blood, doesn't leave him cramped with uneasiness, and it could be because when he glances over to catch Dean looking at him Dean doesn't look away. There's a weird floating sensation hovering in Sam's chest. He doesn't feel unmoored by it so much as he feels like he's waiting for—well. Something. He tucks the last grocery bag into the trunk and then stands back, stretches his arms up toward the gunmetal sky to ease the crumpled feeling in his spine after ducking through the little stores, trying to avoid security cameras, and when he opens his eyes again Dean's looking at him, hip up against the passenger door. He drops his hands back to his sides, rolls his shoulders under his jacket, and Dean's mouth twitches.

"Lunch?" he says.

As though Sam wouldn't follow.

They walk across the street to a restaurant called, improbably, Momma Dean's, and Sam would crack a joke except that Dean is so obviously pleased by it the jibe wouldn't penetrate. The menu is all soul food and Sam doesn't even think about trying to eat healthy, and so they end up with their little diner table covered in smothered chicken, fried catfish, mac and cheese and collard greens. Dean moans around the first bite of dark gold, deep-fried chicken and Sam grins, because for this one moment this is just his big brother, loud and uncouth and deeply appreciative of all things purely corporeal. Even the smear of gravy he leaves when he shoves the back of his hand across his mouth is endearing, somehow, and Sam has to turn his smile on the waitress in self-defense.

Sometime after carefully making sure Sam gets the lion's share of the greens and stealing most of the macaroni for himself, Dean takes a long gulp of sweet tea and then says, "Hey, explain something to me."

It's said... mostly casually. Sam flashes a look up at Dean and takes in the studied relaxation in his posture, and refocuses on squeezing lemon over his last piece of catfish. "Yeah. Anything."

Dean pauses, forks up another bite of gravy-sopped chicken. From the kitchen comes a deep female voice bellowing for someone to take an order, and then from the other side of the wall a voice says _Hey, Leroy, turn on that damn radio_. A burst of static cuts across the noisy tangle of the other diners' conversation and then resolves down to John Lee Hooker, and Sam almost doesn't hear it when Dean swallows and then says, "How did you—"

Sam swirls his straw around the bottom of his mason jar of tea. "How did I what?"

The waitress stops by again before Dean can answer, drops off their check with a smile and a _thanks a lot, sugar_ at Dean. Dean pulls out his wallet and rifles through their remaining cash, which conveniently keeps his eyes off of Sam while he says, "Listen. You don't have to give me details, here. I just don't get it."

"Get—"

He throws down a handful of bills and then looks up. "How you can go to wanting to jump my bones all of a sudden, man." It's said with that odd, faintly hostile humor that Dean acquired sometime while Sam was at Stanford. Sam clenches his hands on his knees, under the table. "I mean, who wouldn't. But not exactly brotherly behavior, you know?"

Still ever so slightly hostile, but he isn't deflecting anything. His eyes on Sam are steady. Sam remembers the warm bed beside him that morning and consciously unclenches, takes a sip of the too-sweet tea. "Yeah, I know."

Dean's eyes narrow, a little, and then he stands in one smooth motion. Sam follows him out the door, into the grey-lit afternoon of the parking lot. Dean's hands are in the pockets of his new jacket, his head high as he scans the lot for cameras. Sam's about to lead the way across the street to the car when Dean stops, abruptly.

"What?" Sam says. Dean's frowning, looking off through space. "Dean. What?"

"Did you want to?" Dean glances up at him, then away, looking off down the street at nothing Sam can see. "I mean, before."

His voice is uninflected. Sam takes in a breath, then looks around. They're still right in front of the restaurant and the table of guys by the door is starting to glance at them through the big windows, and he jerks his head at Dean, starts to lead the way through the parking lot. He hears Dean's boots scuff behind him and they wend their way between the cars, keeping a few feet between them. When Dean's on the other side of a huge lifted truck Sam pulls in another quick breath and then says, in a rush, "I don't really know."

When they come out on the other side of the truck, Dean's staring at him across the hood. "How do you not know that?"

They've hit the sidewalk and Sam keeps walking, moves across the empty street and heads straight for the Impala, because he knows Dean will follow him and he's not sure he can keep talking if Dean's going to keep looking at him like—and he glances back and, yes, like that, like Sam's hiding things and any minute the Apocalypse is going to start again.

"You remember Zachariah?" he says.

"Uh, yeah. Sam—"

"It wasn't like the djinn then, you said. I mean, we really believed we had those whole lives. Like, you had that whole history of being Dean—what was it, Dean Smith. Remember?" He pauses, but Dean's quiet. They reach the car and he walks around to the passenger side, but Dean doesn't open the driver's door. When he finally looks up, Dean's lost all hostility. He's looking at Sam with his chin tucked down, faint frown on his face, like he's really, really listening. Sam shrugs. "It was like that, but more subtle. I mean, the worlds I'd be in, they'd be just like this. You were still my big brother, we still lived out of motels, we still hunted, even. There was just that—one extra detail."

Dean puts the hand not holding the keys on the hood, spreads his fingers out. "But then you came out of them, right? So you knew it wasn't real."

There's a slight questioning tilt to the sentence. From someone else, Sam would hear it as asking for reassurance. "Only after." An apology rises to his lips but he forces it down, because Dean's still looking to him for answers and he owes him this. Owes him a lot more. "Dean," he says, and then has to swallow because it comes out rough. "That was what the punishment was. That it wasn't real. He'd pull me out because it was the comedown that hurt, not the part where he gave me—"

He cuts himself off, but Dean's nodding anyway. He pulls his hand off the hood and spins the keys between his fingers. Sam realizes he didn't really answer Dean's question only when Dean visibly shrugs it off and jerks open the car door.

"Gotta say, Sammy," he says, angling himself into the driver's seat, "if that was all that went down I'm not giving you a ten on the 'worst afterlife' scale."

Sam settles into the passenger side, a smile unexpectedly rising. "Yeah, well. Maybe sometime I'll tell you about the rest of the stuff. If you can stomach it."

The Impala grumbles to life under Dean's hands. He gets a glance, but he keeps his gaze directed out the windshield and the little smile stays tucked into the corner of his mouth, because despite everything they're still Winchesters and if anyone is going to build a fragile camaraderie over torture endurances, it's them. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Dean shift into gear, and then he puts a hand on the seatback just next to Sam's shoulder as he twists around to back up.

"If I can stomach it, he says," Dean murmurs, reversing carefully around the huge SUV parked beside them. "I can promise you, Sammy, I'll take anything you want to dish out. Got plenty of practice."

Sam glances over and Dean's looking right at him, a smirk curling his soft mouth. Dean takes his hand back and throws the car into drive and the lurch of acceleration seems to hit right in the base of Sam's stomach.

 

At the motel Sam smiles at the middle-aged manager until she extends the cheaper room rate for an extra night, and then they go back to the room and start assembling a batch of salt rounds. Dean sits on the floor between the beds and Sam takes the miniature desk, and Dean tunes the television to some VH1 show about the '80s. They don't talk much, but there's that tension in the room again. He caps the round he's just finished and watches Dean funnel salt into a casing, watches him grin when the B-list celebrity on the screen starts doing a pretty decent impression of Spicoli from _Fast Times_.

The feeling under Sam's skin—it makes him want to run ten miles, makes him want to start a fistfight, to feel the blood and breath come so hard there's no room for thinking. Instead he keeps quiet, watches Dean's capable hands. When Dean caps his last round he rolls to his feet and shrugs his shoulders and catches Sam watching, but he just slides the boxes of shells onto the counter and says, "Come on, there's still work to do."

The bar is on the other side of the university and, for a Thursday night, it's packed. Shabby wood floors, tables scarred with generations of students' booze-soaked evenings, music shying from anything popular and settling on thick blues, dirty acoustic covers of songs Sam hardly recognizes. He settles at one of the few empty tables and watches while Dean insinuates himself at the bar and instantly catches the attention of the kid behind it. The blend of laughter and conversation is too loud for Sam to hear what he's saying, but the kid's grin in response is genuine. When Dean takes the two pint glasses and turns away the kid's eyes follow with an unmistakable warmth. Sam drags his attention away with an effort, but when Dean makes it back to the table with their beers he hasn't thought of anything to say.

"Ten beers on tap and not one domestic," Dean says, settling into the other side of the booth. He slides a glass of something pitch-dark across the pitted table. "College towns, I swear."

Sam takes a swallow. It's good—barely carbonated, sweet. It also hits his gut with a blast of alcoholic warmth and he blinks.

Dean's watching him over the top of his own glass. "Good?" he says.

Sam takes another swallow, feels the heat fill his stomach. He says, "Yeah," and watches the little smile tuck into the corner of Dean's mouth before he turns away to survey the bar, one arm spread over the back of the booth.

It's only nine o'clock, so few of the patrons are really drunk enough for a full-blown Winchester hustle. There's a group of grad students at the big corner booth next to theirs, arguing heatedly over politics, or maybe religion, something they really think matters. The pool tables in the back are seeing little action, and Sam catches Dean frowning professionally at a group of kids messing around, mocking each other good-naturedly over their complete lack of talent. No poker being played, and Sam can't see a dartboard, either, and so he leans back into the squashy cushion of the booth, lets the noise of normal lives roll over him.

They finish their first beers and a waitress appears instantly offering a second round. Dean gives her an absently brilliant smile and Sam can practically hear her engine turn over, but it's not going to happen. It's an amazing feeling, the certainty he has of that. Dean lifts his second pint in a semi-ironic toast and knocks back a third of it in one go. Sam licks his lips and matches him swallow for swallow.

They're talking, kind of. Not anything important. Dean tries to describe the plot of some movie called _Inception_ that he missed while he was gone and Sam argues that grunge is a genre that will outlast mullet rock, and it's fine. Normal, almost. For a few minutes it'll be like they're just brothers again—but then Dean will shift in his seat, or their eyes will catch, and it all floods back and then it's... well. It's something else.

The thing is—they've done it already. Sam traces his fingers over an old carving in the table, _Jessie + Garrett 4ever_ , the defiant scratches worn smooth with time. They've done it, and Sam knows that Dean liked it, and he's pretty sure that Dean knows he knows. The memories are an unsettling awareness that nevertheless heat his blood to effervescence under his skin, an odd giddiness rising up when he lifts his eyes and meets Dean's considering look. He thinks, _I want to take you to bed_ , and takes a swallow of sweet dark ale with Dean's eyes on him, and then thinks about what it would be like if Dean let him. He glances away, over the rest of the bar. The grad students near them have moved on to an argument about female representation in the media, and the kids around the pool tables are drinking more and playing less, and at the table next to them a dark-haired girl is half in the lap of some guy, his mouth at her ear and a pleased smile playing across her lips. The music has gotten louder, making conversation more difficult, and Sam closes his eyes, feels the bass thud through the floorboards and shiver up his boots.

No one in this town knows them. They don't have any idea what Sam and Dean are and never will, unless they are very, very unlucky. They also don't know that the two tall men at the booth in the corner are brothers, and a prickly flush rises up Sam's neck when he thinks of leaning over the table, taking Dean's face into his hands. Even better, sliding into the other side of the booth with him, pressing him into the corner and slipping his hands into the shadow under the table, and no one here would think anything other than _oh, great, couple of fags_. Maybe chase them out of the bar, but for the wrong reason, not knowing why they really should. He opens his eyes, almost dizzy, in time to see Dean tip up his glass and swallow down the last inch of ale. He raises his eyebrows at Sam when he's finished and Sam wonders if he can see the impulses Sam's barely fighting down in his expression. After a second, the corner of Dean's mouth curls up and Sam's thoughts stutter down into something dark and hot, but then—Dean stands, rolling his shoulders under that new goddamn jacket, and he says, "Okay, time to work," and then Sam can breathe again.

An easy mark at pool—a half-drunk kid, amiable and not terribly good, his family's wealth obvious in his name-brand polo, his careless tipping of the waitress. Dean starts with a game of nine-ball and Sam follows them into a round of cutthroat, and it hardly counts as hustling. They take his fifty, and then his hundred, and when Dean sinks the last ball in the second game of cutthroat the kid grins and leaves another two hundred on the table without the slightest animosity. It's enough for the hotel and for another week's living besides and Sam buys the kid a beer, because he doesn't know it but he's keeping them alive. Dean rolls his eyes, but hands the waitress a ten anyway to make sure the kid gets home okay, and a pulse of want goes through Sam so strongly he has to escape to the bathroom to splash water on his face.

They get back to the hotel before midnight. "Hallelujah for nice Southern boys," Dean says, tossing the new roll of bills onto the counter with their salt rounds. "If every night was that easy we'd be staying at Hiltons."

Sam sits on the edge of the mattress. "You wouldn't like it, though," he says, with a slightly tipsy certainty. Dean gives him a frown. "No challenge. You don't like things that are too easy."

Dean looks down, away, but there's a hint of a smile while he shrugs off the leather jacket. "Lucky for you, huh," he says, and then he disappears into the bathroom.

Sam closes his eyes. The shower clicks on with a rush of water on porcelain and he drags one foot onto the bed at a time, unlaces his boots with blind, slow fingers. The lamp by the door spreads faint red across the dark behind his eyes, but it doesn't bother him, because the light is Dean looking after him as he always does. He throws his socks and jeans and overshirt over the side of the mattress and crawls up to drop his face into the pillow, the faint buzz of drunkenness making the slick of fabric across his skin into something rich, nerves tingling and catching every flicker of sensation.

He's just adrift enough to not need to think, and so he can just listen when the shower clicks off, can roll onto his back and press his cheek into the warm pillowcase while he listens to the rhythmic scrape of shaving, the water running in the sink. The light seeping under his eyelids flares when the bathroom door creaks wide; faint pad of feet over plush carpet and the light rattle of metal on glass when the whiskey's cap is unscrewed. So much like every night when he was younger.

"You asleep, Sammy?" he hears.

He smiles, against the pillow. "Yes," he says, and there's a light huff, somewhere off to his right.

"You're a lightweight, little brother," Dean says, much closer, and Sam's about to shrug when the lamp clicks off, and then the mattress next to him sinks with unexpected weight.

He's not actually drunk enough for this. His breath freezes in his chest for a second, and beside him Dean shifts, settles heavy at Sam's side. When Sam works up the nerve to open his eyes, it's to faint white light seeping from behind the half-closed bathroom door and Dean's bare back turned to him, broad and pale. He's close enough that Sam can smell the minty warmth of him, and after a cautious few seconds he turns, too, leaves a few inches between them so they don't touch.

The heater turns off and leaves the room in silence, quiet enough that Sam can hear their breath. Even his swallow feels too loud, not enough moisture in his mouth to merit it. He wants—God, he _wants_ , and yet he's paralyzed, because the thought of being pushed away is too much, but even worse would be if Dean wanted to push him away and didn't dare to.

There's a sigh, in front of him. "This is stupid," Dean mutters, and then turns over. Sam catches an elbow to the stomach and he pulls back, because all of a sudden there's his brother, six inches from his face. In the not-quite-dark, he can barely see Dean's expression, catches the self-mocking curl of his mouth. "I'm no good at this."

Sam swallows again. Doesn't answer. Dean blows out another long breath and it's warm against Sam's chin, his throat, smells of whiskey.

They should be talking. Sam should say something, should ask the questions. He closes his eyes again, instead.

All those hundreds of little stolen worlds, universes built around Lucifer's honest smile, somehow he's never had this. When he sank into that Dean it was always something familiar, something like home—none of the wretched tension that riddles his body now, that makes his stomach sour with fear. Dean then was always a sure thing, something he didn't even think about. His brother, who weighed him as worth more than the world, who gave him everything but was willing to take what he wanted, too, and God, how he'd wanted. Now, he feels the space between them like a chasm. The idea of leaning in those few inches and fitting their mouths together like he's done a thousand times, it's familiar and yet not, because all of a sudden despite all his memories it's the first time, and it means something more now than it ever did in his head.

He keeps his eyes closed and thinks the big, awful words, the obvious reasons why he should be expecting hellfire and lightning bolts, but perhaps his conception of sin is a little different now. Really, the only consideration he has is Dean. Probably the only consideration he'll ever have again. He should feel guilty about that, he thinks, but after everything he's done he just doesn't have the guilt to spare.

There's a faint touch to his hip, over his boxers. He tilts his head and knows they're breathing the same air, and for a world-tilting second it's like being a child again, pressed close with Dean in a narrow bed, keeping the cold and lonely world outside of their little shared universe. With that in his head it's easier, somehow, to nudge closer, and it's purely accidental that they move together at the same time. His eyes are still closed, and so his lips end up at the corner of Dean's mouth, their noses brushing, but then his hand comes up and tilts Dean's jaw and they fit together easy, so it's all right.

It's a little kiss, close-mouthed and dry. Sam pulls back a bare centimeter and sucks in a shaky breath. He's about to pull back farther when Dean presses in again, soft and quick, and then again, and then he puts his hand on Sam's shoulder and shoves back a foot. He's breathing harder than he should be, but then Sam's in the same state. Sam opens his eyes to find Dean staring into the middle distance, somewhere through Sam's chest. His pupils are huge and Sam reaches out, cautious, to put a hand on the smooth skin over his ribs. He glances down and—somehow he hadn't seen it, but Dean's wearing just a towel, knotted low around his hips. It's nothing in the way of armor, and somehow it's that which settles Sam, gives him the ounce of certainty he needs to say, "This okay?"

Dean flops onto his back and passes a hand over his face. "This isn't even in the same county as okay, Sam," he says, and after a second he sits up, swings his legs over the side of the mattress. Sam thinks, for a second, that he's going to move away, get into the other bed or maybe pull on clothes and leave the room entirely. Instead, he only leans forward and grabs the bottle of whiskey off the bedside table, takes a swallow.

He doesn't drain the bottle, as Sam had half-expected. Sam pushes up onto one elbow and Dean just sits there, bottle dangling between his spread knees. His profile is limned in white from the half-open bathroom door and he seems to be looking out the window, though Sam very much doubts he's seeing the night outside.

Sam waits a few seconds and then reaches out, cautious. He puts careful fingertips to the small of Dean's back, above the towel, and when he's not thrown off he drags them out in a spreading star, flattens his palm to the dip of spine, molding his hand to the curve of warm muscle. "Don't punch me, okay," he says, and it's not really joking. "But you liked it. Before."

Dean doesn't stiffen, or startle, or move away. He sits, looks off into the distance. Sam looks at his hand, tan on pale skin, and then forces himself to look up, to watch what he can see of Dean's face.

"So, I know I can make it good. But I can't—Dean, if you don't say yes, I can't. I won't do that to you again."

Dean closes his eyes. "Sam, you didn't—" He shakes his head, doesn't continue.

Sam stays still. He keeps his hand on Dean but doesn't push, doesn't do the things he knows could work, doesn't put Dean on his back as he halfway wants. And, yes, he wants, but after all these years he's learned patience, and he'll wait for Dean. As long as he has to.

His hand rises with the long, slow breath Dean takes in, then falls. "Okay," Dean says, and Sam's eyes snap up to the lit edge of Dean's face. He nods, jerkily. "Yes."

Sam sits up. His hand slides up to Dean's shoulder and he pauses, for a second, feels his brother tense and alive under his palm, and then he leans forward, puts his mouth to the warm smooth skin over Dean's right shoulder blade in a plush open kiss, lets his tongue sneak out to find the clean taste of it. His mouth comes away with an almost inaudible sucking sound and under his hand there's a shift, Dean's back stretching to accommodate his touch. He strokes over the ribs, pets down over the symmetrical columns of muscle surrounding his spine, and he slides his mouth in a soft line up to the slope of his shoulder, breathing out against the wet to feel Dean's skin twitch. When he gets to the knob at the base of his neck he settles into another damp, slow kiss, more heat than pressure, his hands loosely bracketing the narrowness of Dean's waist. Dean's breathing hard—not panicky, but Sam slides his thumbs in long curves over the planes of his back anyway, tries to gentle as best he can.

After a few seconds Dean fumbles the whiskey bottle back onto the table, and when he plants his hands on the mattress on either side of his hips the muscles in his arms stand out in tense cords. Sam runs a careful touch over the sharp lines of his shoulderblades, down his rigid arms to bracket his wrists in loose cuffs, and then picks up his head, sets his mouth right to the back of Dean's neck. A shiver runs through Dean. Sam takes in a breath with his nose buried in the short soft hair in the tender hollow of his skull, mint-smell making his mouth flood with saliva from the familiarity of it, and then he lets go of one of Dean's wrists, puts a light touch to his chin. He isn't going to insist. He pulls back, to the side, and doesn't put even the slightest pressure on Dean's jaw, but then his face is turning anyway. He's still got his eyes closed, but his mouth is open in soft invitation, and Sam splays his hand over one clean-shaven cheek when he leans in over his shoulder for a real kiss.

It's not chaste, this time. He licks into Dean's mouth, trying not to go too fast, but Dean only makes a little noise and flicks his tongue over Sam's lower lip. It's an artless kiss, not practiced or easy; their teeth click together a few times and the angle isn't quite right and it's fantastic, it's the best thing that's happened to Sam in months. He pulls back, after a while, because he isn't getting enough breath, and Dean's lips are wet and red, saliva gleaming on his chin. He gets a shock of memory— _fucking Dean from behind, sharp and shallow so he makes those gorgeous little half-pained noises, twisting Dean's face to the side so Sam can catch his mouth, so he can feel his lips spread in a shaky grin._ His hand tightens on Dean's wrist without his permission and Dean's eyes open, slow and damp, almost drunk-looking, and he thinks that he could do it, he could pull Dean down onto his front and he could get him up on his knees and he could screw into him, slow if he wanted, fast if he didn't, and Dean would take it. He  _would_ , and he kisses Dean again just for thinking it, soft press against the bow of Dean's mouth. Dean doesn't close his eyes when Sam moves in and they're still gleaming dark and huge in the barely-there light. Sam runs his thumb under Dean's lower lip, knows all the things he could do, but won't, because they would make Dean scared of him.

It's an awful thought. His brain shies from it, because he can hear a big brother saying _I ain't scared of anything_ , but he knows now that it was a lie. He still has Dean caged between his two hands and he kisses him again, keeps his fingers gentle on his cheek and jaw, and then he shifts back a few inches, pulls Dean along with him.

He eases down, turning Dean's shoulders with delicate pressure until he gets the idea and pulls his legs back up onto the mattress, turns his weight in toward Sam's. They end up on mostly on their sides again, though Dean's got his head on the pillow and so Sam has to lean in on one elbow, has to bend his head slightly to get to Dean's mouth. He puts his other hand on Dean's ribs, on skin slightly chilled from being out of the shower too long, and kisses Dean again and again, short soft presses against the yielding curve of his lips. His thumb runs restlessly back and forth along the ridge of one pectoral, remapping the feel of Dean's skin outside of jumbled memory, and when he tips his head in again to give Dean another kiss he's met halfway there. Dean slides his hand under Sam's arm, fingers curling tight into the t-shirt over Sam's shoulder, and then he tilts his chin up, meets Sam's mouth and presses it open, easy, flicking his tongue in for another taste.

They're necking like idle teenagers, but Sam's grateful for it. Gives him a moment to clear his head of any confusion, lets him focus on the Dean who's here, now, who's warm against him and getting warmer, whose mouth doesn't taste like whiskey anymore but of slick mingled spit, the faint salt of skin. He lets his hand map down over Dean's stomach, feels the quiver when his abdomen clenches on contact, and then his fingertips brush rough terrycloth and he pulls back just a little from Dean's mouth, because for this part he needs to see his face. Dean's eyes are half-lidded and when Sam pulls away he licks his lips, bites them between his teeth. It's just as he does that that Sam passes his hand down over the towel and feels the line of Dean's dick—hard, not just a little but all the way there, and Dean releases a noise like he's been punched, soft but deep in the back of his throat.

"God," Sam mutters, and closes his hand over the cloth-covered shape of it, squeezes while he puts his mouth to Dean's chin, to his jaw, to breathe hot against his cheek. Dean's hips flex in a slow surge against the pressure of Sam's palm and he makes a decision. "Stay right here," he says, up against the corner of Dean's mouth, and tightens his grip for one want-darkened second before he rolls off the other side of the mattress.

It's too bright in the bathroom and he has to blink for a second before he finds what he's looking for. When he steps back out into the room, little complementary bottle of lotion cool in his palm, he finds Dean on his back, one knee pulled slightly up, an arm slung over his face so his eyes are hidden in the crook of his elbow. Sam knees up on the bed, tosses the lotion onto the mattress where he'll be able to find it later, and then crawls up to lie at Dean's side, leaves kisses on his ribs and just above one nipple, at the hollow of his throat. He drops his chin to Dean's chest and, when Dean finally lifts his arm a little and looks down at him, Sam gives him a wide grin.

Dean lets out a little huff of breath. "Dork," he says, and if it's shaky, if his eyes are too shadowed to see, Sam doesn't care. He'll take it. He tilts his head back and forth, digging the point of his chin into one firm pectoral, and Dean huffs again, takes his arm off his face and pushes his hand into Sam's hair. He expects a tug, some kind of retaliation, but Dean's fingers only tuck his hair behind his ear, twine into a loose, easy handful.

Sam's a little surprised by the jolt of want that spurs through his belly when he puts his mouth to Dean's skin again and can feel that weight shift to the back of his neck. He's hard, of course he is, has been since the first moment Dean's tongue touched his mouth, but it's not like he had a plan for how this was going to go. Now, he knows what he wants and he tongues over Dean's nipple, sucks a kiss to his collarbone and rubs his hand firmly up his stomach and over his breastbone, and he knows how he can get Dean to go along with it.

When he moves up to Dean's mouth again the hand tightens in his hair and he's held close while Dean explores, while Dean's tongue flicks rough over his palate. It's not possessive, not quite, but there's enough of an echo of it there to make a dark thrill curl up around Sam's heart. By the time he finally pulls away he's breathing hard, but then so is Dean. He's leaning over Dean on one elbow and Dean blinks at him when he shifts back, when he slides his hands down to Dean's hips, over the loose line of the towel.

"Come on," Sam says, tugging, "come here," and then he suits actions to words and uses his strength the way his body has been urging him to do this whole time, pulling Dean on top of him and rolling onto his back in one smooth motion, so that for a second Dean sprawls across his chest and he can feel the solid, startled weight of him, the honest physical sense of his presence. He'd kept his hands tight on the towel and so it's still covering everything it needs to when Dean gets his hands onto Sam's chest and pushes himself up to sit on Sam's thighs, knees on either side of Sam's hips.

He's frowning, but not seriously, shifting his weight slightly. Sam's not sure he's quite aware that he's inches from where Sam would like him best, but if he keeps moving like that it'll be really, really obvious. "What is it with you and getting me up here, Sammy?" he says, looking down at Sam with an expression that's trying for teasing, but not quite making it.

Sam leans his head back into the pillow and settles his hands on Dean's knees. In the seconds before he answers he lets his eyes track up Dean's body, the strong lines of his legs where they disappear beneath the white towel, the lean definition of muscle beneath pale skin, the freckles he can barely see in the dim light—less on his stomach and chest, where the sun rarely touches, but clustered dark on the tops of his shoulders, on his hands and the bridge of his nose. "I like looking at you," he answers, finally. Honestly, too, even if that's not his whole motivation. If he got Dean under him he's not sure he'd let him go.

Unexpectedly, it makes Dean's mouth part, surprise deepening his frown for a second. Sam's hands tighten on his knees, some deep instinct the only thing that doesn't make him tumble Dean onto his back after all, force him to understand what Sam means. Dean knows how attractive he is, he must, but Sam realizes with an odd wrench that—this is the first time Sam's said anything like it, now that he's entirely himself. Dean doesn't say anything, just looks at him with those dark startled eyes, and Sam slides his hands up over the tense line of his quadriceps, skips over the dangerous territory under the knotted towel and cups his hands carefully on Dean's ribs, drags up to thumb over his chest. It's a soft, obviously worshipful touch, and Sam wonders if Dean will be irritated by it, whether he'll shove back and off, make some crack intended to hurt. He doesn't know what his own face is saying right now, too intent to try to control his expression, but after a few seconds Dean softens, tilts his head to one side.

"Well, take a picture, it'll last longer," he says, but it's quiet, none of the bite Sam expects. He shifts again, warm line of his thighs opening a little around Sam's hips, and then he plucks at Sam's t-shirt with both hands, rucking it up some so his stomach is exposed. "Your turn." Sam blinks at him and Dean rolls his eyes. "If I'm going to be all on show up here, perv, then you've got to level the playing field a little. Fair's fair."

Sam swallows. Dean raises his eyebrows, a little, and then Sam puts his hands back on Dean's hips, lifts him slightly so Sam can edge further up the bed, gets his shoulders up on the headboard. He goes easy, keeps himself up on his knees when Sam lets him go, and he's still watching when Sam curls his fingers into the hem of his t-shirt and pulls it off over his head. He holds it crumpled between them, stupidly, because he honestly—he hadn't expected reciprocation, but Dean's taking the ball of warm cotton out of his loose grip and dropping it to the bedspread, pushing his shoulders back into the headboard so that he's still. One thumb skimming over the skin marked with their tattoo, Dean's eyes flick down his chest and over his arms and glance at the bulge of his erection where it's stretching his boxer briefs, big and obvious, and then they come back up to Sam's face.

"Not bad, Sasquatch," he says. But he's still touching their tattoo, and his other hand is sliding off Sam's shoulder and up into his hair, and when Sam tilts his head back he leans right in for a kiss, no hesitation.

The kiss is slick and dirty and Sam gets his hands back on Dean's skin as fast as he can. He scrapes blunt nails over the back of Dean's neck to feel him twitch, and slides a firm touch down his back to keep him in place when he shifts his weight, and then his fingers slip over the dip of Dean's waist and touch terrycloth. Dean makes a small noise when Sam pulls back from his mouth, but Sam needs to see his face. His lips and eyes are so dark, wet and shining in the dim light, and Sam nudges his nose against his cheekbone, mouths sloppily at his jaw, but makes sure Dean's looking right at him when Sam's fingers go to the barely-together knot of the towel. There's not even a flicker of protest when Sam drags the towel out from between their bodies—and there's a surge of relief, of course there is, because no matter how sure he'd been it's still like touching grace to have Dean here, with him, wanting him back beyond all reason. When Dean's mouth tilts in a little grin at whatever's in Sam's expression, Sam smiles back, helplessly, and then drags his hands over warm bare skin, wraps his fingers around Dean's cock and pulls in slow, sure drags, leaning up to feel the noise Dean makes against his tongue.

It's easy, after that. He works with his hand until Dean is pushing against him, breathing shakily enough through his nose that he has to pull away to get enough air. Sam grabs his hips, then, pulls him back up onto his knees and drags him forward bodily, strong enough that he has to throw one hand up against the wall so he doesn't overbalance.

"Sam, what—" he says, but he cuts himself off when Sam wriggles down on the mattress, just low enough that when he grips Dean's dick around the base he can angle it on a level with his mouth.

Sam licks his lips, can guess what it looks like from the expression on Dean's face. "Like this?" he says, curling his free hand around Dean's hip. "Can I—Dean, can I—"

Dean's frowning, again, but it doesn't look like protest. Sam can't decipher the expression, but his brother doesn't pull away, and so he leans forward, sucks the head in and catches that first salt surge of flavor. It makes him shudder all over, for a stupid-making second, and he firms his lips over the soft ridge of the head, strains forward to take in as much as he can with the awkward angle. Above his head there's a shocked burst of air and he closes his eyes, savors the weight on his tongue for a few dear seconds, and then pulls back and off, slow. His mouth is already watering so much he has to swallow before he can speak.

"I want to," he says, dragging his thumb up and down the now-wet underside. He looks up and Dean's watching him, mouth half-open on panting breath, propping himself up with the one hand on the wall. His other hand trails a touch over Sam's cheekbone, traces the bone down to his jaw, thumbs under his lower lip, and Sam takes the permission he's given, gets one hand on the meat at the back of Dean's thigh to urge him on and opens his mouth for the slow, slick push forward.

It's good. God, it's really good, better even than Sam's memories of the times that actually happened, because he's here, now, no confusion blurring what this means. He keeps his lips firm, rolls his tongue against the underside, but really there's not a lot of finesse happening because he's so overwhelmed by the sparse hair on Dean's legs, the marring of a knife scar on his hip, all the little imperfections that tell him that this is real. He keeps one hand on Dean's thigh, urging him forward, and when at last there's a quiver under his palm and Dean's hips flex in a shallow thrust he almost thinks he's going to cry. He does hum a low note of appreciation and Dean does it again, rocks in so the head slides against his soft palate.

Fingers slide around his jaw, slow and careful, no pressure behind them. "You like that?" Dean says, quiet, and it'd be such awful porn dialogue except that he sounds somehow wondering. Sam squeezes his eyes shut and the groan is unintentional, but then Dean fucks forward again anyway, and Sam forgets to be embarrassed.

He also, for a while, forgets the exact circumstances of what they're doing, and when he slides his hands onto Dean's ass to encourage the way he's finally riding his mouth, he's not really thinking about which Dean it is. It's too distracting: hot glide of pressure on his tongue, lips starting to buzz, Dean taking what he wants without pausing for panic. When he slips two fingers into the crack, though, and drags them down tight, clean skin and it makes Dean rock hard enough into his throat that he chokes—then, he remembers.

"Jesus, sorry, sorry," Dean's saying, hand fluttering against Sam's cheek while he coughs, but Sam shakes his head in dismissal, swallows hard. Dean's thumb pets over his cheekbone apologetically and Sam appreciates it, but he's more focused on where he hasn't moved his fingers, where Dean hasn't dragged them away.

He blinks the faint trace of tears away and wraps his left hand around Dean's cock, jerking slick a few times through the pre-come and spit, and he's watching Dean's face when he resituates his other hand, when he drags the pad of his thumb over the smooth perineum and then presses it flat against the hole. Dean's mouth is open, but when he catches Sam looking at him he flicks his tongue over his lower lip and then bites it, breathes in hard and shaky through his nose. It doesn't look practiced and it makes Sam roll pressure with his thumb in little pulses, a tiny massage against the tense muscle there.

"Did we ever—" Sam starts, and his voice is hoarse, but he doesn't _know_ , it was only six times and he doesn't have every detail. "Have you ever—"

If his eyes weren't fully adjusted and letting in every ounce of light, he probably wouldn't have been able to see when the light flush in Dean's cheeks spread. His jaw drops a little, but this is ridiculous. Dean _embarrassed_ , ears turning pink like Sam hasn't seen in—God, years, flush spreading down his neck and Sam wants to put his mouth there, wants to feel the blood-hot spread of it against his lips.

"It's not funny," he hears, and a hand cups his cheek, thumb brushing over one of his dimples where his grin has spread too wide.

He presses his lips together and swallows, eyes on Dean's. "Sorry," he says, but God, he isn't, and he thinks Dean can tell when he rocks his thumb again to provoke another of those startled, open-mouthed breaths. "You've got to tell me, have you ever—" but Dean's shaking his head, short and sharp, still red-faced and still not moving away, and Sam lets go of his dick and fumbles on the mattress, finds the little bottle buried under his shirt in seconds.

Bright citrus floods into the air as soon as he pops the cap, orange and something spicy, and the lotion's too thin when he drizzles it over his fingers, behind Dean's back—it runs down his palm, drips down onto his own leg in startlingly cool drops. He drops the bottle and it bounces off his thigh back onto the bedspread, but it doesn't matter that he's lost it because his fingers slide together slickly enough as he tries to warm the lotion. He uses his grip on the back of Dean's thigh to urge him up a little higher, and one of Dean's hands lands on his shoulder when he starts to pitch forward, but it's okay, because there's enough room for Sam to slip his slicked hand between their bodies, between Dean's legs, and he looks up at Dean's face in time to catch the way his eyes slam shut when Sam's middle finger strokes hard over his hole.

He has so many memories of doing this that this moment seems impossible, but somehow it's not. He circles, rimming wet and slow, and the breach, when it happens, is painstaking, Dean's hand clenching tightly enough into the meat of his shoulder he knows there'll be bruises. Sam gets his other hand back onto Dean's dick, jacking so slow it can't really be doing much, but he's distracted by the tight, hot drag of muscle around his finger when he starts to rock it in little, coaxing pulses. Amazing enough that Dean managed to keep him away from this for six months, but more so that no one has ever done this to him, never slid past those easily breached defenses and pushed inside, deep enough to make his eyes open and stare down half-blindly, to force that look of shock to part his pretty mouth.

Something dark twists in his stomach to think that so baldly, but oh, it's true. He moves his finger more firmly, pulling in and out in a little mimicry of sex, and when he drags it out to swirl around the rim Dean loses his balance, knee skidding out from underneath him. He manages to catch himself, one hand on the headboard and the other flat on Sam's chest, but his thighs have splayed out around Sam's waist, the muscles shuddering under his skin, his head lowered so his breath is puffing hard against Sam's ear. Sam's wrist is trapped between them, his fingers still buried up where he wants them most, but he skims his other hand up Dean's back to his neck. He can't see Dean's face anymore, but that's okay. He turns his face into the curve of his throat, presses his lips to the sweat-damp skin, and with his mouth to the reassuring fast thud of Dean's pulse he rubs back and forth with two fingers and then pushes, up and in.

He feels the jolt everywhere, Dean's body spread over his so close it'd be impossible to hide. He works his fingers slowly, but he doesn't stop, because— _thank God_ —he has proof enough that Dean likes this, that he wants it, as much as the dream of him did. Maybe more. He opens his mouth against Dean's throat and suckles soft so he won't leave a mark, and rocks his fingers in and out, works through the tightness when the bumps of his knuckles make it past the opening. He's not going to fuck Dean tonight, no matter what his dick protests, but this is almost enough, just curling his fingers in that so-familiar beckoning motion and feeling him surge with it, his cock sticky and flexing against Sam's stomach. He gets his other hand off Dean' s neck and pushes it between them, gets a firm grip on Dean and squeezes at the same time he curls his fingers hard, and smiles against Dean's throat when there's a faint, _oh fuck, like that_ , against his ear.

It's not quick, but it doesn't take as long as he expected. Dean's hips are grinding back against him and his forearm is aching just slightly with the effort of pushing his fingers in and out when Dean's muscles lock, when he shoves forward into Sam's grip. Sam jams his fingers against Dean's prostate and kneads deep, lets Dean fuck into his hand as he pleases, and then Dean says, "I'm— _Sam_ ," in this half-shocked voice Sam's never heard before, not even in his head. He tightens his one hand and presses deep and inescapable with the other, sets his teeth into the curve of shoulder in front of him, and then Dean slams his palm hard into the headboard and Sam's grip goes slick, and slicker, spilling over his knuckles onto his chest and stomach. Dean clamps around his fingers with the paroxysm, a dirty wet clench that imperils the promise Sam made to himself, but he holds onto his patience by a bare thread, listens instead to those deep gasping breaths as he moves his mouth up to the clean-shaven jaw, to one cheek, to kiss carefully at the corner of his open mouth. He only realizes he's still moving his hands when Dean's fingers twine with his, on his dick, to force him to still. This Dean gets sensitive, then, he thinks dazedly. He loosens his grip, but he can't quite let go, because when he trails a light touch over the wet head Dean jerks and clenches around his fingers again.

"Easy, Sam, Jesus." His voice is wrecked, barely audible. He's barely keeping himself up on his knees, leaning almost all of his weight into Sam, now. It traps Sam's arm between them, his wrist sliding through the mess on his stomach and putting pressure on his own painfully hard cock, but even that isn't really distracting him from how Dean's arm has slung around his shoulders, his mouth still pressed wet and shaky to Sam's temple. Sam skates a tiny touch over Dean's still-sensitive skin just to hear the sharp breath get sucked in by his ear, and he half expects Dean to shove him away but instead—instead Dean's other hand goes flat on Sam's chest, over his pounding heart, leaves him free to do as he likes. It makes that dark thing coil tighter in his stomach. He puts his lips to Dean's throat and carefully rocks his fingers out, easing out of the clench of muscle slow so that he can trace his fingertips around the rim again, and Dean's fingernails dig into his chest for a hot second before he does actually shove back, raises up on his knees and out of Sam's grip.

He's terrified, for a second. Of course he is. He blinks up into the dim space between them and he can't read Dean's expression, and both of his wrists ache and his fingertips are pruny, and it doesn't matter that the evidence is all over his stomach, he thinks Dean's going to leave him there, that maybe he's broken it forever.

Dean shuffles back, further down the bed, and Sam makes an incoherent noise in his throat when cold fingers dig into the waistband of his boxer briefs, because he really had thought—and Dean drags them down and off in one rough quick move, so fast Sam's erection catches painfully in the elastic and then slaps back up onto his stomach, making him hiss. The briefs get tossed over the edge of the mattress with the rest of their clothes, but then Dean stops, one foot on the floor between the beds for balance, and just looks at him.

Sam raises up a little on his elbows, doesn't say a word, but the way he hardens up further when Dean stares at his erection isn't at all his fault. What is he supposed to do, with his brother watching him like that, all dark shadowed eyes and bitten mouth. One of Dean's hands settles on his ankle, curling proprietarily over the bone there, and Sam can't help it, he sucks in a breath. Dean glances up at his face, and quirks a little grin at whatever his expression could be, but Sam isn't focused on that because now Dean's fingers are sliding slow and purposeful up the inside of his leg, steady pressure dragging up calf to knee to thigh, and Dean's still watching his face when the fingers reach his balls—tender now, from waiting so long for any contact—and then hit the base of his dick, and then when they finally curl around the ache of his erection Dean slides up the bed to lie at his side and Sam buries a hand in his hair, scrapes his fingernails over his scalp and tries not to come that instant.

He closes his eyes for a second, just to feel Dean's weight along his right side, to feel the flex of his shoulder where Sam's wrapped his arm around him, the not-quite-confident grip Dean's maintaining on his dick. He's trying to be patient, but if he doesn't move soon—"Dean," he hears himself say, embarrassingly breathy, and his eyes squeeze tighter shut when a kiss is pressed just below his ear.

"What do you need, Sammy?" Another kiss, at his temple, and Dean squeezes a little harder when he pulls back to meet Sam's eyes. "What do you want?"

Sam blinks, feels like he can't get enough breath. Dean's slightly above him, looking down with a barely furrowed brow, with his lips parted, and it looks like he's being honest, like this isn't an obligation, like he's doing this because he wants to. "You," Sam says, and Dean shifts, raises up a little higher to get a better look at Sam's face. Sam amends that to, "Anything," but he was telling the truth the first time. He shifts the arm he has around Dean's shoulders, drags his hand down Dean's back, clumsy with all the suppressed urges surging under his skin, but he's shocked all over again that he's being offered this.

"Anything," Dean repeats. He looks at Sam's face for another second, annoyingly put together so quickly after falling apart, but Sam doesn't have it in him to make a crack, because it's another of those things he doesn't remember. It means that this—Dean lifting up and sliding back over his legs, Dean settling his weight there and leaning in to take him in hand again with his mouth inches from Sam's—is real. "Give me an open invite like that, Sam, that's a dangerous road."

Sam stares up. He can't look away from Dean's face, but he feels it when Dean's fingertips drag through the mess on his stomach and come back to wrap around him a little slicker. Not really necessary, because he's leaking all over the place with how much he wants this, but the idea of Dean doing it, of mingling them together on Sam's skin, it reaches into his gut and ties him in dark, impossible knots. Dean tightens up his grip, starts jacking slow and easy, and he doesn't flinch when Sam reaches up, because he has to get hands on him. He ends up with his palms skating over Dean's ribs in restless, repetitive strokes, smearing slickly over the smooth warm skin, but Dean doesn't look away from him, either, so he has to guess that he doesn't care. Dean's heavy on his thighs, his free hand hot and clammy where it curls over Sam's shoulder, and he's started to twist his wrist a little, letting the head pop through his fingers at the top of the stroke, and Sam's about to go crazy. Crazier.

He opens his mouth to speak and his throat is desert-dry. "Can you—"

Dean doesn't stop moving. "What do you need?" His face is in shadow, still, but Sam can see his eyes and they're dark, the curl of his mouth satisfied.

Offering, again, and it's too much. "Your mouth, I need—" and he gets the satisfaction of startling him, at least, but even if a chorus of voices surge with  _yes_  at just the image of those pretty lips parting around Sam's girth, that's not what he meant, and before Dean can ask he lifts up the few inches he needs and takes the kiss he couldn't ask for.

Dean lets out a startled noise into his mouth, but he doesn't pull away. Kisses back, hard, moves his mouth with Sam's and runs his thumb firmly just under the head of his dick and Sam's hips jerk without his permission. He doesn't have a lot of leverage with Dean sitting across his legs, but Dean rides the motion, lifts up just a tiny bit on his knees so Sam can fuck up into his hand, and then again, and when Sam wraps his hand over the top of Dean's and forces his grip tighter Dean just grins against his mouth.

"You like that?" he says, again, but this time it really is porny, would be ridiculous if Sam weren't half-blind with wanting him, but as it is it's a dirty murmur against Sam's mouth, against the angle of his jaw. He lets Sam drag his hand in hard, short jerks, puts his other hand up into Sam's hair. "You want more, right? Want me on my back, want to fuck me, maybe. Maybe you want me to suck your dick."

Jesus,  _Jesus._  Sam's heart is going to explode. Dean's talking right into the curve of his ear, smooth-shaven skin right up against Sam's cheekbone. Sam pulls their joined hands harder, feels the way Dean's fingers have laced with his, hard bone in his knuckles settling alongside Sam's.

"Never done that before, Sammy," Dean says, voice scraped-up and low. His fingers clench in Sam's hair and Sam buries his face in the sweaty angle of Dean's jaw, tries to focus. "You'd be the first. Think you could do that? Think you could make me want that?"

His fingers tighten, tangled up with Sam's, and it hurts but Sam arches up into it anyway. He's shaking his head, though, and clumsily cups Dean's neck with his free hand, thumb petting his hairline. Dean pulls back a little, but he isn't trying to get away, and Sam gathers up just enough sense to mumble, "Only want it if you want it," lips moving wetly against Dean's skin.

Dean's hand spreads out to cradle the back of Sam's skull. He helps Sam along, their joined grip moving slick and loud on Sam's skin, and after a few seconds he presses his mouth to Sam's temple. "I know, Sam," he says, and Sam's toes curl and his fingers dig into Dean's neck and he hauls Dean into his chest as he finally, finally comes.

His breath is embarrassingly loud, almost sobbing in his throat. Dean's grip goes lax, but he lets Sam keep moving their hands while he works out the last of it, hips still jerking and fingers clenched hard. Lips press into his neck, the rigid line of his shoulder, until he starts to relax, letting himself slump into the mattress. Dean's fingers slip away from his, gently, and slide up his chest in a wet smear through the mess. He still has his eyes closed when Dean pushes up and takes his mouth. Slow, this time, and lazy, fingers sliding out of his hair to stroke a line along his jaw, his chin. He slings his other arm around Dean's shoulders and their chests slide together. He's trembling all over and no good reason why, but it's okay, because Dean isn't leaving and Sam can ground himself against all his living skin.

He's more than a little dazed by the time Dean's tongue flicks over his lower lip again, prelude to his mouth easing back. The solid warmth of him rolls away, for a second, and Sam makes a sound which he knows under other circumstances he'd find utterly mortifying. "I'm right here, Sam," he hears. Fingers brush his hip, and then Dean's back, knee barely touching Sam's thigh. He trails a touch over Sam's wet abdomen and Sam tries to catch his hand but instead Dean captures his wrist, wraps his fingers in unexpected terrycloth. "You're a mess, little brother."

It's quiet, but odd, because that tone's the closest Dean ever gets to open affection. He forces his eyes open to find Dean cleaning off his hand with a corner of the scratchy towel, getting off the mix of come and lotion as best he can. His eyes are on Sam's skin and he doesn't react to Sam watching him—only finishes with the one hand and then picks up the other, rubs gently at the wet skin until it's dry and as clean as it can get. He swabs over Sam's chest and stomach, dabs at his still mostly-erect cock and ignores its weak twitch, and by the time he balls the towel up and tosses it over the side of the mattress Sam's a little closer to clarity. He stretches out one clean finger with an effort he feels justified in calling herculean and brushes the tender skin at the side of Dean's knee. That, at least, makes Dean glance up at him.

Sam tilts his head on the pillow, flicking his finger back and forth so it just barely brushes the bend of Dean's knee. The skin there is very soft. "You good?"

Dean twitches, a little, and reaches down to catch Sam's finger. "Yeah," he says, but he's looking down at the bedspread again and Sam can't tell if it's the truth.

He's tired—he's always tired, right after he comes, but he has to make sure. He scoots up against the headboard and nudges Dean to help until he can get the bedspread and its embarrassing wet spots out from under them, and then he slides under the sheets and holds up the edge until Dean gets under, too. He has memories of folding himself around his brother, tucking him into his chest so he knows that Dean's safe, but he's not sure that'll be allowed tonight. Instead, he rolls onto his side, watches Dean situate himself on his stomach and fold his arms under his head, under the pillow. The light from the bathroom leaches the short hair at the base of his skull of color, leaves his skin white and his hair a dull silver. Sam watches him take in a breath, looks at his pale pink mouth and the dark smudge of his eyelashes, at the tiny frown that isn't leaving his face, and then he reaches out and puts his hand over the back of Dean's neck, over the vulnerable skin there.

He brushes his thumb over the bone just behind Dean's ear. He hasn't been thrown off. "You going to flip out?"

Muscle shifts a little under his fingers. "You keep asking me and I might," Dean says. His eyes slit open and he blinks, once, looking right at Sam. It's hard to tell what his expression is, with his face half-buried in the pillow.

Sam folds his other arm under his head and lets his hand slide down Dean's spine to rest low on his back. There's not a twitch, no tension under the skin. "Seriously."

Dean shakes his head, against the pillow, and closes his eyes. Sam still can't read his face. "Go to sleep, Sammy," he says, and turns his face away.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

Sam's eyes are closed, his face mashed into the pillow and his leg snugged up against a long line of heat against his side. He's not looking over, but he knows that Dean is sleeping because he's been listening to the cadence of those lungs his whole life, and even with thousands of years in a cage the sound isn't something he'll ever forget. For a hazy moment while he waits for the world to reassert itself, he's transported to age six, age eleven, waking up beside his big brother and feeling for a few seconds indestructible, because he knew that Dean would never let anything hurt him. If he failed—well, he'd done his best, and it's not like he'd counted on Sam being the one to do the hurting.

Sam blinks his eyes open to find the window full of grey light, the clouds still dull and spread out to the horizon. Behind him, Dean's still breathing low and slow and familiar, and so Sam eases out of bed as carefully as he can. The air's cold on his naked skin and he has a sudden urge to cover himself, to hide behind modesty as he's done for half his life, but—things are different now, aren't they. He rolls one shoulder to ease away the ache of sleeping and takes a long breath, and then turns and heads right for the bathroom.

It feels like running away. Too similar to waking up—what, only two days ago, wrecked from understanding that the taste of Dean wasn't just in his head. He turns on the shower, takes a piss. While he waits for the water to heat he glances over himself in the mirror, finds the shadow of blood under his skin where Dean's thumb had dug too sharply into the meat of his shoulder. Proof that he didn't imagine it, as though Dean naked at his back this morning weren't enough, and he steps into the now-steaming water, ducks his head under the spray, and doesn't judge himself for pressing his own thumb into the small mark, to feel the ache a little deeper.

He feels calmer by the time he's clean. He slings the remaining towel around his hips and eases the bathroom door the rest of the way open on the grey-lit room, but Dean's still a long sleeping line in the bed. He moves as quietly as he can while he gets the duffels open on the other bed, while he tugs on boxer-briefs and worn jeans, but when he's looking for a clean shirt the mattress behind him creaks. He slants a glance over his shoulder, but Dean hasn't woken up; he's flopped over onto his back, an arm slung over his stomach and one hand curled loosely on the bare mattress at his side, his fingers lax and empty. Sam drops the shirt he'd been holding.

He didn't leave any marks on Dean. There'd been an urge, that faintly teenaged desire to leave purple claims dotted where collars and sleeves couldn't cover, but he'd kept his head and restrained the impulse. They'd no more claim Dean as his than the pink scar on his arm from the werewolf claims Dean as a monster's. His skin is mostly smooth, more than it has a right to be with the life they've led, but Sam wants to keep it that way, wants Dean just faintly marred and freckled and perfect, because he is.

He shakes his head, flushing, but he's alone right now. Dean is hopefully millennia away in his head, somewhere safe and clean, somewhere far from where Sam is sinking down into hopeless, maudlin reverence.

Sam knows Dean is beautiful. Just the thought makes him color, something curling dark in his gut, but he's known it a long time, even—before, when he was a kid and might not have been as twisted-up about his brother as he is now. He doesn't really remember Dean's awkward years. He assumes he had them; there must have been a time around twelve or thirteen when he'd had acne, or suffered a gangly phase, something. Sam's memories kick in when Dean is fifteen, suddenly tall, skin gold but prone to sunburns, freckles dashed across the bridge of his nose. Confident, of course, because he'd always tried to be a superhero (often succeeded); he'd been more capable with his fists or knives or guns, even then, than most soldiers would ever be, and the awareness of that transmuted itself into a kind of insolent, careless grace. It attracted girls, of course, wherever they stayed, even if the ratty clothes and strange housing might have given them pause. By nineteen, when he asked Dean how many girls he'd taken out, Dean honestly couldn't remember, and Sam can remember looking at him, at his hands and lips and long legs, and thinking, _no, you probably can't_.

The cage made that knowledge clearer, but the cage twisted it, too. He traces his eyes over the broad span of Dean's shoulders, to the narrow tuck of his waist before it disappears beneath the sheet. It's unfair, really unfair, that he didn't get to come by this honestly. That Dean wasn't there with him every step of the way.

There's a sudden, electronic buzz, and he blinks to find that his vision has gone a touch blurry. He looks to find his phone discarded on the table between the two beds, humming sharp and urgent against the wood veneer and he grabs for it, but by the time he reads the name on the display and flips it open Dean's stirring, roused by the noise.

"Bobby," Sam says, and Dean's eyes fly open.

"Hey, boy, you doing all right?"

Dean looks at him, then away, panic tightening his face for a wrenching second. Sam has to turn his back, and he sits down on the edge of the bed. "Yeah, we're good." He has no idea if it's a lie. The mattress behind him creaks and there's a rustle of sheets. "What's up, Bobby?"

Bobby talks about some case he's doing up in Delaware, something about demons cutting people out of their crossroads deals before the time is up, but Sam can only half-listen. Dean has struggled upright, come around to stand between the two beds and rummage through the duffels on the mattress they didn't use, and he's just stood bare in front of Sam, all that skin just a foot away from him. It's kind of tough to concentrate on what Bobby's saying. Dean finds some boxer briefs that have faded down to grey, tugs them on with quick, jerky movements while Bobby tells Sam about this kid Garth who's been helping him out, how he's goofy but also earnest, reliable. Sam asks about Rufus and Bobby says something about a vampire nest in Oregon, but he's really watching Dean sliding worn denim over his thighs, leaving his jeans open while he digs for a t-shirt.

"Sam?" he hears, and jerks a little.

"Yeah."

Bobby's voice is coffin-dry, as usual. "Hope I'm not boring you with this talk of hunting evil, kid. You take care of that witch I sent you after?"

Sam clears his throat. "False alarm." Dean's found a shirt, that old olive-green one that's just a tiny bit too big, so it gaps a little around the neck, falls loose around his waist. He hasn't yet put it on, has just slung it onto the bed while he tries to find a match for the lone sock he's holding.

He's let the silence go on a little too long again, because Bobby's sighing in his ear. "So can I assume you're ready for another job?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure thing," he says, and Bobby starts describing some article he saw in a newsstand rag, something that sounds like a creature hunt, something that needs more than just one hunter.

"So, you want us to meet you in Jersey?" he says, and can't help it anymore. The light in here is perfect and the air strangely clear, so much so that it's like looking at a picture, and he stretches out one hand to curl around the dip of Dean's waist, to feel warm, real skin.

Sam's taking in the few details Bobby has about the new case on autopilot, all his attention directed at the pretty span of Dean's back, so there's no way he can miss it when his fingers alight on Dean and Dean goes perfectly, abruptly still. In his ear, Bobby's asking to meet tomorrow at an old hunting cabin in the Pine Barrens, and Sam agrees automatically, but he hasn't moved his hand, doesn't dare to. Dean hasn't thrown him off. Dean hasn't done anything at all, in fact, and Sam swallows. He strokes his thumb in a little circle, swirling gently along the smooth skin, and he can see when Dean relaxes, deliberately, shoulders easing so obviously Sam can't believe he thought the posture had been natural.

Dean finds the second sock as Bobby's saying goodbye.

"Bye," Sam echoes. Dean hasn't shaken his grip, loose though it is—he's unfolded one of their myriad plaid shirts, is sniffing it for freshness as though he doesn't have a care in the world.

Sam drops the phone to the bed, and stands. The area between the beds is small and he's immediately right in Dean's space, only a few inches between his bare chest and Dean's bare back, and he spreads both his hands around the narrow span of Dean's waist, and still Dean doesn't flinch, doesn't tense, just stands there and lets Sam do what he wants.

"So, where're we going?" Dean says, voice calm and casual.

There's no reason Sam's stomach should be this tight. "Bobby wants us to help with some monster that's eating people, up in Jersey." He thinks he managed to sound normal. Maybe.

"Better make sure we've got enough silver, then," Dean says, and Sam thinks that he could just lean down and put his mouth on the back of Dean's neck, could lick and bite and shove him down onto his front on the mattress and Dean would let him, and he yanks his hands away from Dean's skin.

Dean doesn't react to his abrupt shift, only pulls the t-shirt over his head. Sam sucks in a slightly strangled breath through his nose and tries to think rationally. He watches, still only a foot away, while Dean shrugs the flannel onto his shoulders, watches while Dean heads into the bathroom and doesn't once glance Sam's way.

The sink starts running, and then there's the sound of brushing teeth. Sam pulls on his own shirt, fumbles on socks and boots. He can't be sitting out here with his head in his hands when Dean gets out of the bathroom, but he—he just needs a second, needs to think.

"What's wrong, Sam?" he hears, and he screws his eyes shut. This is so very much not the time.

Lucifer chuckles, sounds like he's right behind Sam for how close the sound is. There's a feather-light touch over his shoulders and he hunches them, can't help it.

"Oh, I think he's starting to get confused again, don't you?"

Michael's voice is just as smooth and amused as his brother's. "I think you're right."

The water in the sink cuts off and Sam jams his thumb into his scar, twists hard with the nail in the thin skin.

"Bobby say where to meet him?" Dean says, and Sam opens his eyes to find that they're the only two people in the room.

He takes a deep breath. Dean flicks a glance down at his hands and he pulls them immediately apart, but when Dean's eyes meet his they're mild, his expression calm. It's like that horrible blankness before they talked all over again, and Sam's stomach lurches, but it doesn't make any sense and Dean's still expecting an answer.

"Yeah," he says, "I'll give you directions," and Dean nods, easy, and Sam escapes into the bathroom to brush his own teeth so he won't have to look at that calm face for another second.

 

They take the I-44 up through Missouri, driving fast but easy into the sun. Dean's put on one of the really old Sabbath tapes and Ozzy is whining out the lyrics to _Into the Void._ When it gets to the line about leaving the earth to Satan there's a chuckle from the backseat. Sam refuses to look back, and instead stares out the window at the bare fields, the thin naked branches of the trees they fly past under the fragile winter sun.

His thoughts are crowded in on each other. He goes over last night in his head, over and over, tries to think if he did anything wrong, if he pushed too hard.

"You could always ask, Sam," Lucifer says. "I thought you were all about this policy of truth and openness."

He glances across the seat. Dean appears to be lost in that zone he gets into on interstates, when the Impala's running smooth and no one is actively chasing them. He's wearing the reddish leather jacket again, driving slouched with just his thumb and forefinger on the wheel, and Sam has to drag his eyes away from the easy bowed sprawl of his legs, forces himself to stare out of the passenger window.

"Man, you've got it bad. What, did last night not get it out of your system?"

That wasn't what it was supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to be some romantic comedy thing, _let's just kiss and then we can stop thinking about it_. Not for him.

Lucifer leans forward over the back of the seat, so Sam can see him in his peripheral vision. "I don't even get what you're worried about. He's not freaking out, right?"

_No, but he should be_ , Sam thinks, in clear response, and then has to shake his head, drag himself back. He can't react, even inside his head. He knows that's a road he won't be able to come back from.

"Aw, come on. I'm just trying to engage, Sammy." Sam folds his arms over his chest, settles a little deeper into his side of the seat. The tape runs out and Dean flips it over, _Sweet Leaf_ and its jokey, coughing intro. Sam's always hated this song. "So, what. Now you're gonna freak out, because big brother is a little too well-adjusted for your taste? What does a guy gotta do to win you over, hot stuff?"

They drive on, through the morning and into Illinois, a quick lunch at a drive-through on the other side of St. Louis, and they still haven't talked. Sure, Sam has given Dean all the information he has on this supposed Jersey Devil hunt, and they've speculated a little about who this Garth character could be that Bobby would be willing to consider working with him, but it's nothing substantive. Sam's not an idiot. He's not expecting a heart-to-heart. It's not even that Dean's acting like nothing happened, because Sam knows the mannerisms Dean puts on when he's ignoring an elephant in the room, and this isn't that.

It's grinding away at his nerves. The devil isn't helping, either, sitting in the backseat and singing along to Uriah Heep just a little off-key. He wishes he dared shut off the radio altogether, but if he does that then Dean's going to snap at him, and he's not ready for that. Not yet.

He'd been so careful. He glances at Dean again, at the fine lines beside his eyes when he squints against the noon light glinting off the damp asphalt of the 50. He still doesn't know what happened when the truth of the situation was being kept from him, when sixty percent of his life was stuck behind a wall. He has the facts he demanded, yeah, and he has fragile, impossible memories of Dean opening up to him, letting him do what he wanted, and participating, even. But—

"That's the problem, isn't it, Sam." Lucifer's leaning forward, speaking into his right ear. His reflection is smiling in the door mirror and Sam closes his eyes. "Can't read his thoughts. See, if you'd just let my brother ride your brother, we'd have a much better understanding of his mindset."

"If I'd been able to get inside Dean, we wouldn't really be having this problem," Michael points out, and Lucifer sighs. There's a rustling of cloth, from the backseat, but Sam refuses to look around because they are not there. They're not.

"Anyway," Lucifer says, after a few minutes. Uriah Heep has given way to Motorhead and Dean's tapping his thumb on the steering wheel, ignorant of the archangels' conversation. "The righteous man is a little too righteous for his own good, if you ask me. 'An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything,' isn't that right? Even..."

Sam swallows, and wraps his arms around his chest. He can see when Dean glances over at him, in his turn, but the look doesn't linger, because Dean is pretending that everything is fine. When Dean's safely looking back at the highway, he takes in a silent, shaky breath, and looks out the side window. The fields rolling past are dead, now, as they cut further into the wintry heart of the country, and he closes his eyes against them. He recognizes a metaphor when he sees one.

He doesn't notice falling asleep. When he startles into wakefulness it's dark outside the windows and they're getting off the highway, heading for a rest stop. He's disoriented, dreams unremembered but nevertheless swirling discomfort in his chest, and he's bursting for a piss.

"Where are we?" he gets out, after a second.

Dean glances over at him. "Welcome back, Rip Van Winkle. Just outside Wheeling."

He drags a hand over his face, sits up a little more. For a wonder, the radio is actually off. Either Dean silenced it to let him sleep longer, or the DJs were just getting worse the closer they got to West Virginia. He'll never know, because he won't ask, and even if he did Dean wouldn't tell him.

They grind into a semi-nice rest stop, lit up with enough fluorescence to glint off the surrounding trees, bare limbs standing out against the black sky. There are a few trucks parked down at one end of the lot, and Dean positions the Impala almost as far from them as they can get. Sam's out of the car as soon as it's in park, heading for the low building and its surprisingly clean restroom.

He feels marginally better after he takes a leak, once he washes his hands and face in clear, cold water. The scar on his hand is still shiny and pink, the newest hole in its center already healed over enough that the scab has gone. It's a good spot, he thinks. Easy enough to reopen, to get at that bright surge of pain that resettles everything into the dull colors and grimness of reality. When he gets outside, he takes deep breaths of the chilly November air, stretching the everyday ache of living in a cramped space out of his legs.

Dean emerges from the bathroom in his turn. Sam's already been to the vending machines, bought them a couple of sodas each for the caffeine, a few bars of crappy chocolate for the cheap calories. He's leaning against his side of the Impala, looking up through the naked branches of the tree Dean parked them under at the few glimpses of stars he can catch through the night's cloud cover. He's not expecting much, but he's surprised anyway when Dean doesn't say anything to him at all—he just walks around the car, settles in the driver's seat again.

Sam takes a deep breath, looks out across the parking lot. There's no movement from the semis at the other end, so they're as alone as they can be. No angels around, either, at least for now, and he yanks open the passenger door with a loud creak, drops down to sit on his side with one foot still out on the asphalt. Dean can try to start the car and peel off, but he's going to have to leave Sam's right leg behind to do it.

Dean's not looking at him, though. He's just staring out the windshield at the mostly-empty highway, tracking the few cars that go by. Sam takes another breath, and tries for calm.

"Isn't it my turn to drive?"

He gets a glance, Dean's eyes reflecting light his way for just a second before his eyelids fall and his head turns back. "No need, I can keep going. We've only got five hours to go." One of his hands is resting on the lower curve of the wheel, but he still hasn't turned the engine back on.

Sam looks at him for another few seconds. This is as good a time as any, but. "Are you okay?" he says.

Dean does look up for that one, frowns. They're parked a little away from the nearest light pole, but there's still enough fluorescence reflecting off the puddled asphalt to pick out all of Dean's features in dim, clear grey. "Why wouldn't I be?" he says, finally.

It sounds sincere. Sam searches his face. "Dean. Come on."

Finally, Dean's expression sours. His lips thin and he rolls his eyes, looking back out at the highway. "Let me guess, you want to talk."

His tone is flat, unwelcoming. At least he isn't walking away. "It's been a whole day," Sam says, in a fragile attempt at humor, "of course I want to talk." He waits, but Dean only shakes his head, doesn't look over. "You don't think it's a big deal? We—Dean. We had sex."

It seems appalling, for a second, said out loud like that. Dean apparently doesn't agree, because he rolls his eyes again and slouches a little in his seat, the picture of unconcerned. "Hey, you've gotta remember, this ain't exactly a new thing for me. And you, hell," he says, and now he's got that faint sarcastic edge going, the one that makes Sam's hands curl into fists. "It's obviously fine for you. So what is there to talk about?"

"What is there—" Sam cuts himself off. He can feel his nostrils flaring. Dean looks over at him, at least, and keeps looking, with that _yeah, what?_ expression on his face. "Well, for starters, what about how this _is_ a new thing? For both of us." Dean frowns, apparently not understanding. "We never—it was the first time in like a year that we were on the same page, man. And now, you're..."

Dean sits up a little more, gets his elbow on the back of the seat. "I'm what, Sam?"

He's dropped the sarcasm. Sam looks out the windshield for a second, watches a minivan roll past on the highway in front of them. "Look," he starts. When he turns back Dean's still watching him, face now still and impassive. "I don't—I'm not expecting anything, here. We do whatever you want, no matter what. But you have to level with me."

Dean shakes his head, frowning. "We're on the level, what are you talking about?"

"Last night," Sam says, and here it is. He pulls in a slow breath, through his nose and out his mouth. "Is that really what you wanted?"

Dean's head drops on a sigh. "Jesus Christ," he says, and he's edging toward pissed. Sam clenches his jaw, waits for Dean to meet his eyes again. He does, with little grace. "I said yes, Sam."

"I know you did." Dean raises his eyebrows, an obvious invitation to explain, and Sam bites the inside of his cheek. "I know you did," he says again, "but now we're here, and I know you, so I'm wondering. Did you only say yes because it's what I wanted?"

And, yes, there it is, Dean's pissed off. He contains it, though, just slams his palm into the side of the steering wheel with a painful-sounding thump. "What do you want from me?" he says, and he's not yelling, but there's a solid core of fury strengthening his voice, and it's not fair that Sam has to catch his breath at the way he looks, right now. "You want banners, a frickin' parade? You want me to get it on CNN, how much I want my little brother to dick me? Because it ain't gonna happen, bud."

Not unexpected, because Dean has always been crass enough for it, but still. Sam can't tell. "No," he says, and he's watching, careful. "I want you to be honest with me. Really honest. Did you want it?"

Dean's mouth drops open a little, and he's shaking his head again, minutely. "I can't believe this," he says, almost to himself.

"Did you?" Sam says. Pushing.

Dean licks his lips, then bites them together. Just a second's hesitation, and Sam thinks, _oh_ , but then Dean's turning a narrow-eyed smile on him.

"Dude, it was a blowjob. You think I'm ever gonna turn that down?"

Stupid, that watching Dean's mouth shape that word sends a little spike of heat down Sam's spine. "Dean," he says, warning, but Dean's smile only widens.

"Hey, what can I say. You've got quite the mouth on you, Sam."

"Is that right," he says, and even through the brief hot rage that flares up he can hear the edge in his own voice, hear how harsh he suddenly sounds. Dean's smile flickers, just barely, and Sam thinks, _fine_.

"So," Sam says, "if I—" and then he grabs the knee Dean has tilted toward him, shifts backwards through the door as he pulls, hard, in one smooth motion.

Dean wasn't expecting it, flails as he's hauled toward Sam—easy, jeans slicking over vinyl so he ends up with his ass on the passenger's side, back hitting the seat with a thump. "Jesus, Sam!" he manages, on a rush of escaped breath, but Sam's already kneeling on the damp asphalt, hands on Dean's spread knees, dragging him right to the edge.

"What?" he says, and it's an effort to keep his tone mild. "Thought this wasn't a big deal."

Dean still has his right hand hooked onto the steering wheel, but at that he gets up on his elbows, looks up at Sam. His eyes are wide, but not panicky, and he isn't fighting to get away. Sam slides his hands up just a little, gets his palms settled heavily on Dean's thighs, and the long muscles there are tense but not quivering.

"It's not," Dean says, after a few seconds. His voice has dropped down two stories. He's got those wide eyes trained on Sam, lips parted over quickened breath, and in this light his colors are washed down, green gone a muddled grey, pink mouth faded to pale. "Just surprised me, is all."

The Impala's angled in such a way that, with the door open, the people across the parking lot won't be able to see what Sam's doing, even if they're looking. But it's cold outside, and they'll be snug in their cabs, not wandering out to check out that old car at the far end, won't bother to examine the guy leaning into it on his knees. Sam slides his hands up higher, thumbs dragging hard lines of pressure up the inseam, and Dean's breath hitches, his hips shift a little, and God, it's getting to Sam. Of course it is. Dean's still lying there, watching him with wide eyes, and he doesn't want to wait anymore. He gets his hands on Dean's belt, gets his pants open and those maddening boxer briefs wrestled down over his hips in what feels like record time, Dean lifting up his ass to help squirm them down past his knees.

Dean's skin pebbles immediately in the cold air, but it's still warm, giving and alive when Sam drags his fingertips back up Dean's thighs, thumbs swiping along the sparse, prickly hair. He's still wearing two shirts and that red jacket, though it's splayed open now around his torso, showing off the narrow lines of his waist, and it's obscene how naked Dean looks with his jeans puddled around his ankles, his boots still on. His dick's still mostly soft, vulnerable, and Sam cups his palm over the swell of it, fingers curling down over his balls when he leans in to catch Dean's mouth. Dean makes a little surprised noise against his lips, but kisses back gamely enough, easy like they've done this dozens of times.

When he drops back down to nuzzle the lowest curve of Dean's belly Dean makes another surprised little grunt, but then Sam's shifting his hand, cupping his balls in a gentle grip, and taking Dean down to the root in one easy mouthful, and the explosion of breath above his head is a lot more vocal.

"Shit," Dean says, thready and a little shocked despite everything, and Sam can't help the grin that pulls at his mouth, even as it's filled. He didn't get this in the cage, not often, not that he can remember, and he likes it—the tender feel of the flesh, salty taste of skin he can easily roll his tongue against. He drags his thumb in slow swirls against the base, sucking just a little, and it's not long before Dean fills completely, stretching his mouth.

He's pinning Dean, with the way he's leaned over his body, bracing on one of his thighs, so he won't be able to get Dean to fuck his mouth the way he likes. This is almost as good. He bobs up and down when he wants, suckles fast or slow as he pleases, and it's not long at all before Dean's hips are shifting, thigh tense under Sam's free hand. Dean's not saying anything, not cursing or taking various deities' names in vain, and Sam drags his head up on a slow slurp.

"Okay?" he says, a little breathless on buzzing lips, and finds Dean panting, his head pressed back into the seat.

He frowns, puts a hand on Dean's stomach where his t-shirt has rucked up, but before he can say anything Dean's nodding, eyes flicking down at Sam where he's curled over Dean's lap. Sam licks his lips and Dean's eyes go immediately to his mouth before they close and he groans, hips flexing.

"Yeah?" Sam says, but it's to himself, and he wipes over his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing spit and pre-come slickly over his skin. He jacks Dean's dick lightly with his left hand, liking how the mixture is almost—well, goopy, and it gives him an idea he wants to go with before he thinks about it too much.

"C'mere," he says, and drags Dean's hips a little further toward him without waiting for a response, far enough that his ass is almost off the edge of the seat. Dean's skin has gone hot with arousal and it sticks a little, the backs of his knees damp with sweat when Sam grabs them and pushes his legs up so that his heels rest on the edge of the car's frame.

"What—" Dean mumbles, but Sam just shoves his knees wider and leans down between them, sucks his dick in again in one long swallow, and whatever Dean was going to say is lost. Sam regains his rhythm easily, but he's being sloppy, lips slack enough that spit and pre-come slides down Dean's shaft, getting his fingers wet and slick. Slick enough that, when he trails them down under Dean's balls, slides over his perineum and circles his hole, it almost feels like real lube.

Dean's breath hitches, obvious even through his already heavy breathing, but Sam keeps circling, pressing in gentle counterpoint to the rhythm of his sucking, and when he pushes harder his finger just slides in, easy. It's tight, of course, the stretching from last night long gone, but Sam crooks his finger a little anyway, rocks it shallowly as he swirls his tongue just under Dean's cockhead, and the way Dean twitches sets the pulse in Sam's own dick to throbbing. He pulls off Dean, lips tight, and spits onto his fingers, rocks the one out and comes back with two. Even in the dim light, it's quite the sight—Dean's body yielding as his fingers push in, thighs tense and starting to shake. He moves his left hand, cupping Dean's balls up and out of the way so he can see a little better, splaying his fingers around the shape of Dean's dick, but he's entirely focused on the wet gleam of muscle around his fingertips, how it clenches when he pushes back in, how hot it is inside.

He's turning his fingers, crooking upward to get to the right spot, when Dean says, "Sam," in this shivery, breathy voice. He doesn't sound—that's not a voice he knows, and he picks his head up to see if it's protest, but Dean is just staring down at him, like Sam's the last thing he expected to see between his legs. A little dazed, a lot shocked, pupils huge enough that it looks like he's been drugged. He's panting, still, in little hitched breaths that sound like they're being dragged from his chest, and there's sweat at his temples and Sam's hit all over again with that sledgehammer feeling of _Jesus Christ, you're beautiful_. He flutters the fingers buried inside Dean, thumb sliding wet along the rim, and Dean's dick jerks against his belly. Sam bites his lip, does it again, and Dean drops his head back to the seat with a grunt that sounds almost like pain.

Sam bends down and gets Dean back into his mouth as fast as he can, tongues hard along the head while his free hand jacks at the base, rocks his fingers in and out in coaxing, scissoring pulses, and it's not thirty seconds before Dean's hands are clenching around the edge of the seat and he's unloading onto Sam's tongue. Bitter, thick and salty, and Sam swallows fast.

He's licking along Dean's spent shaft when he remembers, too late, that this real Dean gets sensitive, and he pulls back hastily. Dean hasn't pushed him off, though. Sam wipes at his face, eases his fingers out of Dean as carefully as he can now that the spit has mostly dried, but though Dean's thighs twitch at the extra stimulation he isn't complaining. It's spinning through Sam's stomach, tighter and darker, and he fumbles at his belt with messy hands, intends on getting himself off right there, can already picture the mess on the asphalt.

He's looking down, then, fingers just barely scrabbling open the button on his jeans, when there's a surge of motion in front of him and hands are pushing at his chest. He rocks back on his heels, elbow hitting the door, and he gets out the "Dean, what—" before the hands are fisting in his jacket and jeans, yanking until he's forced to scramble up to his feet. His knees wobble and almost collapse, but he gets his hands on the roof and the top of the door, maintains his balance long enough that he doesn't fall on his ass.

He's struggling to think through the daze of arousal, and so he stays put when Dean's hands wrench open his zip, when icy fingers curl into his briefs and shove them down just enough that the elastic snaps under his balls. It's a distant discomfort, though, because that's—Dean's still half-naked, still quivering a little from his own orgasm, and Sam wavers on his feet for a second when unsteady hands curl around his hip, circle the fierce jut of his erection, and when Dean leans forward to lap at the head he has to grip the door very hard not to just seize his head and rut in.

This isn't something he ever had. He stares down at the top of Dean's bent head, his hair soft-looking and mussed at the back while he sucks careful kisses against the shaft of Sam's straining dick, while he licks along the ridge of the head with a virgin's uncertainty. Bizarre, that Lucifer never built a world where Dean would do this, but maybe—Dean finally opens his mouth, sucks the first few inches with a cautious slick of tongue, and Sam wonders dazedly if it's because the experience is so gut-wrenchingly unreal. Even more unreal than bending him over, than him laughing as he rolled onto his back for Sam. Those versions weren't his brother, though, not really, and Sam drops one hand to the back of Dean's neck because he has to get some kind of contact, has to make sure this is really happening. He's not urging one way or another, but Dean starts to bob up and down a little, anyway, and his technique is non-existent but that doesn't matter because the fact that it's happening at all is surging through Sam's veins, miraculous and hot. He brings his other hand down, touches the corner of Dean's mouth, the spit that's starting to leak out there. Dean lets him, cups Sam's balls where they're already drawing up tense and tight, and Sam's fingers go to Dean's lower lip where it's dragging back up his shaft, warm and soft and wet, and when he hears Dean struggling to draw in a breath through his nose he firms his grip on Dean's neck, pulls him off.

Dean doesn't fight it, just stays there on the edge of the seat when Sam wraps a hand around himself, jerks himself hard and fast. Sam's staring, but Dean hasn't noticed, and Sam looks at the slack wet parting of Dean's lips, his hazy eyes, and comes hard enough that it feels like he strains something, just barely managing to catch the spill in his other hand as he thrusts forward abortively into empty air, eyes closing in belated self-defense against the image of his brother.

The liquid-hot release churns through him for a few seconds, his blood beating heavy and deafening in his ears. He wrings at himself, his dick twitching furiously as he gets out the last few spurts. The urge to grab Dean's head and force his way back into the wet surrender of his mouth pulses hard in his belly, but he ignores it. Has to.

It takes a moment, but his eyes shudder open again, and he uncurls his hands with some difficulty. "Holy crap," he says, voice weak. Dean doesn't say anything, not that Sam had really expected him to. He looks down, anyway, to find Dean's mouth still slightly parted, his eyes fixed on where Sam's only just starting to soften.

Absurdly, a curl of embarrassment goes through Sam, and he shakes the hand full of his come off to the side, tries to tuck himself back into his boxer-briefs with his right. He glances back at the semis on the other side of the lot, but there's still no one around that he can see. Thank God.

When he looks back at Dean, though, he still hasn't moved, and Sam frowns. "Hey," he says, cautious. He bumps the door a little so there's more room and crouches down, tries to get his face in the way of Dean's stare. "Dean?" he tries, and puts his cleaner hand to the soft line of Dean's jaw, tries to get him to focus.

It gets a little reaction, at least. Dean blinks and actually looks at Sam, but even so he still looks—dazed, sort of, like he's not quite sure where he is. Sam inhales a quick breath through his nose, wipes his messed hand on the wet asphalt and then scrubs it on his thigh, so he can get Dean's face between both his palms.

"Hey," he says again, pitching his voice to soft. "You okay?"

Dean licks his lips, slowly, and a weak grin pulls at one corner of his mouth. "I'm always okay, Sammy," he says, but the cockiness is completely lost in the way his eyes drop closed, how he's quiet and docile in Sam's hands.

When he shivers, Sam looks down to find him still half-undressed, goosebumps pebbling his knees where they're still spread around Sam's body. Sam stands, finishes fumbling himself away, and then urges Dean up to lean against the rear door. He goes easy, not protesting, and Sam finds his stomach churning with rising disquiet as he pulls Dean's shorts and jeans up for him, while he tucks Dean carefully back in, zips his fly, does his belt. When he's done, he lets his hands linger on Dean's hips, thumbs a little at the warm skin of his waist under his t-shirt. Dean's eyes slit open, and Sam stares at him for a few seconds before leaning down for a kiss.

Dean opens up for it without protest, but Sam doesn't let it deepen too much, no matter what he wants. Keeps it to simple presses of their lips, little swipes of tongue, easy as it can be when kissing his brother. When he thinks he can stand it he pulls back just far enough that they can look at each other without their eyes crossing.

Dean blinks, licking his lips again. Sam doesn't know if he's tasting himself after Sam's tongue has been in his mouth, or what, but his eyes sharpen a little more. Even in the half-dark, he can see the color flooding under Dean's skin, ears and neck reddening with his blush when he drops his eyes, apparently now fascinated with the center of Sam's chest. Carefully, Sam removes his hands from under Dean's t-shirt, busies himself with resettling the hem and pulling Dean's jacket closed. His wrists are caught, though, and he stills.

There's a few seconds of waiting, their breath coming slow and white into the little space between them, before Dean stands up a little straighter. "We're gonna be late to meet Bobby," he says, finally. He's still holding Sam's wrists, and his eyes flick up at Sam's before he looks down again.

Sam swallows. "Yeah," he says, and Dean nods a little, doesn't look up at him. Sam's fingers flex, tendons shifting against Dean's tight grip, and he has to try again. "Really, though. You okay?"

Dean's hands release his wrists. He gets another of those quick glances, and then Dean's looking away, off at the highway. "I, uh," he starts, and then bites his lips together again. "Don't know."

Sam takes a step back, folds his arms over his chest. It makes Dean look at him, at least, though he doesn't know what his expression could be that it's making Dean look like that. "Hey," Dean says, "I'm not saying—I'm not freaking out. I mean—not really. Just..." He rubs the back of his neck, still embarrassed, but everything in Sam wants to believe it's because he's being honest. "We've gotta go, Sam. We're already going to be late, we've gotta get driving."

"Right," Sam says, on half a breath, and Dean's look turns pleading. In that second, there's nothing Sam wants so much as to run, to drag Dean with him, find a hotel and sleep for a week, figure out what the hell they're doing and screw the hunt. But Dean's still looking at him, and he's being honest at last after Sam begged for it, and so he squares his shoulders and says, "So, is it my turn to drive?"

Dean relaxes. "Yeah," he says, and Sam nods and walks around to the driver's side of the car.

They settle into their seats at the same time, close the doors together. It smells a little like sex in the car, though they'd had the door open, and Sam's hands are still slightly sticky, will be until they get to another bathroom. He turns the engine over, the throaty growl of it vibrating through the wheel where he's gripping it too tightly. "Try to get some sleep," he offers. "I'll wake you up before we get there."

He sees Dean's nod in his peripheral vision. By the time he's angling them back onto the 70, Dean's got his forehead leaned up against the window, face turned from Sam's, and Sam feels free to let the fear rolling through his belly drag him back to whatever went wrong ten minutes ago.

"Damned if I know, Sam," Lucifer says. Sam jumps, but by some miracle he doesn't jerk the wheel. He chances a look across the seat, but Dean doesn't seem to have noticed. "I mean, hell, you didn't even fuck his face."

"Crass," comments Michael.

"I know. And puns, too." Sam glances in the rearview mirror, checks the road behind them and ignores Lucifer's grinning face. "Hey, you're lucky I'm just being my charming self and not making you drive through the hell-pits."

Sam firms his hands around the wheel. It's a little before ten o'clock and there aren't many other cars on the road. Still. They've got about four hundred miles to go, and if he were Dean they'd make it in four hours. He's going to try for five.

"You know, you really shouldn't be trying so hard to screw big brother if you're going to be this much of a pansy about it," Lucifer says, after a few miles. "I mean, is this what we bred you for? The devil's vessel is supposed to be made of stronger stuff."

Sam fumbles at the radio, makes sure the volume is down low before he turns it on. Static, at first, until he tunes it a little to find a classical station. He doesn't recognize whatever's playing, but it's orchestral, soothing.

"Wagner would be more appropriate," Lucifer says.

"Or Gounod," Michael says.

"What?"

" _Faust_ ," Michael says, and Sam's having a very hard time not telling them both to just shut the fuck up. "They called you Mephistopheles."

"Should've fact-checked a little better." Lucifer leans forward onto the back of the bench seat, trails his fingers along Sam's shoulder. "Sammy, Sammy," he says, on a sigh. "What are we going to do about you. You just can't love anybody right."

Sam swallows. The phantom touch skips along the canvas of his jacket, dips below his collar to touch skin at the back of his neck, trails up to his nape. It feels so real. Real enough that his flesh is rippling with discomfort, trying to get away even as he tries to remind himself that it can't be real, that there's no one in the backseat. Beside him, Dean still seems to be sleeping, and he shifts over to the right lane as calmly as he can, settles in for a long drive.

He shouldn't have pushed. He hadn't been certain of what Dean wanted, and he should have tried to keep talking, shouldn't have made it physical.

"But look at him," Lucifer murmurs, very close, and a hand grabs Sam's jaw, makes him turn his head to catch the dim, dark shape of his brother, illuminated by passing traffic in random flashes of pale golden skin. Sam drinks it in, for a second, then wrenches his head back (because he was looking of his own volition, the hand was _not real_ ). There's a soft chuckle. "How are you supposed to resist all that? And it's not like you made him suck your cock, right? I mean, even I didn't presume that one. That was all him. So how is this your fault?"

An arm wraps around his shoulders and a long weight presses against his side. He doesn't look over, but suddenly Lucifer is in the middle of the bench seat, talking right into the curve of Sam's ear. "I tried so hard, Sam," he says, one hand stroking along Sam's thigh. "Gave you everything you wanted. And now Dean wants to give it to you, too, because we love you, Sammy. We're just trying to give you what you deserve."

The taillights of the car in front of him blur, starburst-red flaring across his vision, and he pulls his hands off the wheel just for a second, presses into the scar with a vicious, desperate twist. "Sam," says a voice, reproachful, but by the time the car starts to pull to the left the voice is gone. He grabs up the wheel again, rights their course. There's nothing he deserves beyond this stretch of almost-empty highway, nothing beyond looking after Dean, for once in his misbegotten life. He settles his hands at ten and two and drives, calm and steady through the dark, thoughts as empty as he can make them.

 

Dean wakes up at two o'clock, with a gasp and a jolt. Sam tries not to check on him too obviously; he's looking out of the corner of his eye, sees Dean drag a hand over his face and swipe at his eyes. He's not sure he wants to know what Dean was dreaming about.

"Hey," he says instead. He tries to sound calm, normal. "We're about twenty minutes outside Wilmington."

Dean sits up a little more, rubs his hands together between his knees. "So, what," he says, and his voice is a scraped-up mess. Sam catches his breath. "We're, what, an hour from Hammonton?"

"Yeah, just left Delaware."

Dean nods. Sam tries to concentrate on the road. He hasn't been bothered by the archangels in the last four hours, but that means he hasn't had anything but his own spiraling thoughts for company. He's surprised Dean was able to sleep, honestly, but then Dean's always been able to catch some shut-eye, one way or another. Even when he got back from Hell, he slept—it might've been riddled with nightmares, sure, but it's something that was drilled into them from the time they were kids. Never know when you might have to run, so take care of yourself when you can. Sam shifts, shrugging his shoulders against the stiffness of sitting for hours. He could wish they'd been instructed to take care of themselves in other ways, too, but. If wishes were horses, and all that.

"How we doin' on gas," Dean says, and Sam glances across the seat. He's still looking out the passenger window, watching the dark woods flitting by this section of the 40.

"Good. I filled up right when we crossed the river."

Dean hmms in answer. He's got his arms folded tightly over his chest, even his knees angled toward the door, and Sam swallows bile. Keeps driving. The radio is pulsing out some quiet singer-songwriter thing, a sweet girl-voice mumbling along with a strummed guitar. He's surprised Dean hasn't immediately tried to change it or put one of the tapes in, but maybe he's too tired. Sam listens, rubs his thumbs along the shine of the steering wheel.

_Without you I am a river, my love_ , the girl sings, _wandering aimlessly_ , and Dean says, "Sam."

He hmms in his turn. He doesn't dare look over. The sky outside is free of clouds, finally, and as they go through the woods there's a slice of pure, starry night overhead, for the first time in what feels like weeks. There's no one else on the highway, either, and Sam wants to enjoy it. A little, false sense of solitude, just the two of them against the world, like it used to be.

Dean takes in an audible breath, next to him, but it's a long while before Sam realizes he isn't going to say anything. They drive on, through the dark, and when Sam finally does work up the guts to check Dean is watching the sky, same as he is. It settles him, a little.

At three o'clock they've cleared Hammonton, pushed on through the little town and into the wetlands beyond it. The cabin Bobby told Sam about is deep into the woods, about ten miles from the camping area where the last victim was killed. Only takes twenty minutes outside of town before Dean is pointing out the little side road Bobby had described, and then Sam is easing the Impala along a rough dirt track, careful of the pines crowding in on all sides.

"Well, I'm betting no Leviathans will find us out here," he says, breaking the long silence.

Dean huffs. "Yeah." He doesn't say anything else while Sam urges the car around a copse of trees, but when the headlights abruptly illuminate the cabin, in a clearing on its own, he clears his throat. "Hey, stop a minute."

There's nowhere else to go, but Sam obligingly puts the Impala into park. The beater Bobby is driving is pulled up to the side of the building, but there are no lights on inside. Sam can't tell if Bobby is in the cabin or if he's scouting the woods.

"You want to go inside?" Sam offers.

Dean shakes his head. "Just—stop a minute, would you?" he says again, and this time Sam can hear the edge to it. He shuts off the ignition, pulls the keys out and cradles them in his palm. He looks out the windshield at the cabin—two stories with a basement, from what he can see, illuminated by a half-moon so that the timber walls are a silvery grey. He pays attention to that so that Dean can have whatever time he needs. He owes him that, at least. Owes him a lot more.

"Look," Dean says, finally. Sam pulls a long breath into his lungs, then turns in his seat. Dean is looking at him, but Sam can't read his face. "This stuff we're doing. I think we should—at least as long as we're gonna be with Bobby, we shouldn't do anything."

The breath pushes out of Sam in a puff of relief. "Yeah, of course," he says.

Dean doesn't look pleased with the easy acquiescence, though. He looks down at his lap, and his hands are curled into tight fists atop his thighs. "Maybe we shouldn't." He flicks a glance up at Sam, then back out the windshield. "I mean, at all."

The moon is spilling white-silver light into the little clearing, which is the only reason Sam can see any part of Dean's face. "Did I—" he starts, and then has to swallow. His gut has gone solid, one impenetrable lump of lead. "You didn't want it."

"Sam," Dean says, shaking his head, almost impatient.

"What, then?" Sam says, and his voice isn't as steady as he'd like. "Because it's not normal? Because it's coming from—"

"No," Dean cuts in, and Sam gulps breath, a weird panicky feeling taking over his chest. "No, it's not that, it's..."

"Dean."

Dean wraps one of his hands around the door handle, and Sam wants to grab him, trap him in the car until he answers. He doesn't get out, though. He looks—Sam doesn't know. He's never seen that expression before.

"You could still get out," Dean starts. He's speaking low, quickly. He looks up, back at Sam, as he does, and Sam gets that jolt of honesty low in his gut. This is Dean speaking the truth. "You could, Sam. We're gonna get rid of these Leviathans. We'll kill them, of course we will. But after—" Dean shrugs, with a little, helpless grin. "You've always wanted something else. I know you have."

The panic has spread out, wrapped his ribs tight so he can only take brief, shallow breaths. He clutches at the waist of his own jacket so he won't lunge across the seat. "Man, it's been a long time since I thought about it that way," he says, after a few seconds.

Dean's eyes are steady on him. "Well, I still do. I do." He doesn't sound sentimental. This isn't a _chick flick moment_ , as the Dean before Hell would've said. "You could get out. No one deserves it more, Sammy."

Sam makes a vague noise of protest, and Dean shakes his head, sharply.

"No, you can," he insists, voice hard. "But we keep doing this, and you're gonna stay with me. I know how you work. But you know hunting's all I've got. And, Sam," and there's a brief fracture of vulnerability, at last, "I can't make you keep doing this just so you can stick around me."

There's an ache under Sam's breastbone. Dean's looking at him, steady and honest, and that means he's been thinking about this, maybe has been for a while now. "Dean," Sam manages, but it's weak and Dean just keeps going.

"You'll get pissed at me," he says, mouth curling a little. "I'll get hurt, or take stupid risks, and you'll freak out until I get pissed back." Sam stares at him, at the tremble of that little smile, at the faint gleam of Dean's eyes where they haven't yet turned from him. "You know what I'm saying? It'll be like you and Dad all over again, except this time you'll start hating me, and if you do that, Sam, I don't know if I can—"

"Boys!"

Sam jumps, so hard that he hits his elbow on the door. Bobby. He's leaning out the door of the cabin, and Sam waves in acknowledgement to make Bobby nod and go back inside. Dean unlatches his door and is about to push it open when Sam puts a hand on his arm. He freezes, and Sam closes his eyes.

"I know we've got to go in, but just give me a second," he says, to the dark behind his eyelids. Under his hand, Dean doesn't move, and he tries to keep himself steady, reasonable. "I hear you. But—can we just table it, for now?" He opens his eyes to find Dean watching him. "We don't have to do anything. Nothing you don't want. But it's not because—not because of what you said. Okay?"

Dean's arm shifts, under his grip, and Sam pulls back, holds up both hands. "We need to focus on the job," Dean says, after a second.

"We will. We will, I promise. And I don't want anything to happen with Bobby around, I'm not suicidal." He tries a smile, but it doesn't feel like it works all that well. "But we should—I need to talk about this."

Dean gives him a considering look, one of those _what are you hiding?_ expressions that Sam recognizes a little too easily. He wants to say more, wants to tell Dean that he doesn't care if they keep hunting, wants to get out all the overly-emotional crap that would make Dean roll his eyes and flee the car, but he doesn't. He just waits, and finally Dean nods, and then swings the door open on a loud creak.

"We better get the stuff and get down there," he says. He sounds totally normal. "Bobby's gonna think we ditched him for a prettier case."

"Right," Sam says, and throws his own door open. He looks down at his palm, then puts the keys into it and squeezes them hard, so the metal bites into his skin. "Right," he says again, and then stands and moves to the trunk.

 

Bobby immediately sets them to work. Makes Dean go down to the basement to start trying to get the electricity working. Sam gets the job of sorting out the ammo Bobby's scrounged from what looks like ten different hunters, figuring out which rounds are pure silver and which are consecrated iron.

"How'd you find this house, Bobby?" Sam says, setting the boxes of rounds on the dusty dining table.

Bobby's fishing through the cooler, sloshing half-melted ice around before he pulls out a can of beer. "Rufus and I took care of a haunting out here, maybe five, six years ago," he says, and pops the tab on the can. He gestures at the half-rotted wallpaper, the thick layers of dirt on the floor that they've scuffed with their footprints. "Ghost killed three people. No one's wanted to mess with it since." Bobby shrugs. "Superstition works out pretty good sometimes."

Dean shouts up from the basement. "Hey, Bobby, throw me down the jumper cables, would you?"

Bobby rolls his eyes at Sam and drains half the can of beer. "Sure thing, your highness," he calls back, and Sam smiles despite himself. He settles down in one of the dining chairs, back to the fireplace, and it only takes another ten seconds before the power is flickering on, the bulbs that aren't already burnt out filling the room with weak light. It doesn't do the deteriorated decor any favors, but it'll do, and he starts loading the pure silver rounds into their empty magazines.

Bobby and Dean come back up the stairs from the basement in a symphony of dangerous-sounding creaks. "Seriously, this place is a shithole," Dean's saying, and Sam smiles again, bending his head. "We'd do better to burn it when we go so it doesn't collapse on some other sucker's head."

"Look, kid, we're squatting. We don't give a crap about whether it's compliant with building codes."

"Yeah, and what's with that?" Dean retorts, moving around to the other side of the table. He grabs one of the beers in the cooler, pops it open one-handed. "Running low on cash, or what?"

"No, jackass," Bobby says, on a sigh. He plops into the chair next to Sam. "Hiding from Leviathan, remember that? Why do you think I told you to burn all your IDs? Chet ain't exactly the only clever big-mouth out there. Hell, that doctor from Sioux Falls is probably the least of our worries."

Sam puts the finished magazine into the box. "You think they're tracing us some other way?"

"Hell if I know," Bobby says, with another shrug. He points at the two of them with the hand holding his beer. "But you two had better be careful. I've got this guy—name's Frank Devereaux, and he's a son-of-a-bitch if ever there was one, but he'll make you an untraceable ID if you figure out something he might want in return. Paranoid as hell, too, which is a pretty reasonable trait right now."

"We haven't gotten any hints of Leviathan activity in a little while, though," Sam says.

Bobby shakes his head. "Doesn't mean they're not out there. Rufus and me and Frank, we've been trying to figure out if there's any kind of pattern, see if maybe we can figure out how to spot one before it chomps your face off."

Dean opens his mouth to respond, but just then there's a crack of electricity and the power blows. "Great," Dean says instead. "This is wonderful."

There's a sigh, and then Bobby puts a camping lantern on the table, flicks it on so the room fills with blue-white light. "Don't matter. Point is, we aren't getting anywhere with the Leviathan, so in the meantime we've gotta stop the world ending all the other ways."

Dean rolls his eyes and drops onto the filthy couch. "Yeah, well. Let me know if you figure out how, because it hasn't really stuck the last few times."

He sounds more bitter than he should. Sam exchanges a glance with Bobby, but he's not going to touch that one. "What's going on with this case, then? You think it's really the Jersey Devil?"

Bobby pulls out his folder, spreads out the articles he's found. Sam reads along as Bobby explains, and it's a challenge to keep his eyes on the poorly-written accounts when Dean is laying back on that nasty couch, pouring the cheap beer Bobby provided down his throat, apparently ignoring them entirely. They agree to split up going to the morgue and questioning the forest ranger who'd found the most recent dead camper, and through it all Dean doesn't say another word. Around four, Bobby takes his sleeping bag out to the other side of the house, spreads out on another half-rotted couch. Sam stays up, finishes with the bullets by the light of the fireplace. It isn't until there's a rough hand shaking his shoulder, Bobby saying his name in a sleep-cracked voice and morning light flooding the room, that he startles upright and realizes he fell asleep right there at the table.

No matter what he promised Dean, he's having trouble focusing on this one. Michael and Lucifer keep flitting around in the corners of his vision, even if they aren't really talking. When they interview the chief ranger—"Ranger Rick," he calls himself, with a stoned little grin—Dean's amused but professional, and Sam does his best to copy it. The restaurant is cheery, bright colors and sunshine pouring in the big windows belying how cold it is outside.

Lucifer sits at the table with them through lunch, pulls up a chair and straddles it backwards with one hand propping up his head. Sam eats his salad, ignores his grin as the weirdly aggressive waiter bitches at Dean. Later, in the woods, Lucifer walks just a few steps behind as Sam and Dean trail Bobby along the path, chuckling when they look up and finally find what remains of Ranger Pete.

"Yuck," says Dean, mildly, and Bobby throws him a look, eyebrows high.

"You wanna call Ranger Rick, ace?" he says, and Dean shrugs, pulls out his cell.

Sam clutches his rifle, leans up against a tree. Bobby takes the opportunity to wander a little, eyes fixed on the ground and whatever trail sign he can see. For his part, Dean settles down on a stump, kicks his legs out and tips his face up into the leaf-dappled sunlight, and Sam doesn't even try not to stare.

"Pretty, isn't it," a voice says, too close. Sam sighs, and checks his watch. Five o'clock. The sun will be going down, soon. "Come on, Sam, let's not pretend we're not looking at that."

Dean's leaning back on his hands, legs sprawled a little so the bow of them is emphasized. He's wearing a canvas jacket almost identical to Sam's, though the color's different—a worn grey, nothing special—and a blue flannel, black t-shirt. Nothing special at all, but he's making Sam's blood warm nevertheless. He looks unconcerned, spread out on the forest floor like that, even though there's supposedly a monster roaming these woods.

"Maybe he thinks you'll keep him safe," Lucifer says, sugar-sweet and mocking, and Sam sets his shoulders more firmly against the trunk, turns his eyes away from Dean and onto the shadows in the sprawling forest.

Rick's a nice guy. It almost feels inevitable that he's snatched up by the monster not five minutes after he arrives at their location. They leave his body with Phil's by the forest service's truck and carry the foul-smelling creature back out through the woods to the cabin, plop its corpse on the dining table.

Dean wanders away while Sam and Bobby do an impromptu autopsy of the very dead and very not-human-anymore Gerald Browder, pulling out object after object slathered in the same rank greyish goo. Unfortunate, really, since this is something Sam would love to be distracted from. From Bobby's grimace, it looks like he agrees—this is more repulsive than their usual. Nastier than a shapeshifter, even. It isn't until they extricate the gigantic and misshapen adrenal glands that he's startled by Dean settling a hand on his waist, leaning over his shoulder to look into the open cavity of the corpse.

"You want to get dinner?" Dean says, right by his ear.

Sam lets out a shocked breath. Dean's pressed up behind him, way too close.

Bobby doesn't seem to have noticed the familiarity. "Kid, you and your iron stomach are a little singleminded," he says, dry as bones, but he's dropping his forceps anyway. "What the hell. We'll hit Biggerson's again, but we ain't going anywhere until I've showered. This smell is making my eyes water."

"Well, hurry up, I'm hungry," Dean says, still leaning into Sam, and Bobby flaps a hand and heads up the stairs. Sam puts down his own forceps, feeling a little shaky, and strips off his gloves. Dean gestures at the corpse with his glass of whiskey. "Guess Gerald here isn't going to want us to bring him a doggie bag, huh?"

A door closes upstairs, and Sam puts one hand on Dean's hip, behind him, pushes as gently as he can. Dean goes easy and Sam turns around and puts his back to the table, keeps one eye on the stairs. "What are you doing?" he whispers. He's not taking a chance that Bobby will overhear this one.

"What? I'm not doing anything," Dean says. He takes another gulp of whiskey, and Sam eyes go to the bottle on the mantle. He doesn't know where it started, but it's about halfway gone, and this makes a lot more sense all of a sudden. "Just want to get something to eat. It's not a crime, Sammy."

"No," Sam agrees, suddenly tired.

The Biggerson's is just as full as it was at lunch. Dean immediately orders the same sandwich he'd gotten earlier, but Bobby was right, the smell is still filling Sam's sinuses, and he orders coffee with an apologetic grimace to the waitress. He fills Bobby in on the sparse info he can get on Gerald Browder. He's trying to ignore the semi-aroused groans Dean's emitting around his sandwich when Bobby asks him what he thinks happened to Gerald and Dean mumbles, "I'm not that worried about it," in a stoned voice around his mouthful of turducken.

It doesn't take long to work out, at that point.

"Hey, my sandwich isn't the bad guy," Dean says, petulant, once they get back to the cabin.

Sam rolls his eyes, unwrapping it from the tinfoil on the hastily cleared table. It still reeks of Gerald's rotted insides in here.

"There's something wrong with you, Dean," Bobby says.

Sam glances up, but Dean doesn't look hurt, just hoists himself onto the edge of the counter. "Hey, I'm fine," he insists, but he doesn't sound offended. "I mean, this is the best I've felt in... weeks. Months. I mean, the Leviathans, Cas, Sam—" and Sam's shoulders tense, but Dean's still giving Bobby a mild, unconcerned look, legs swinging. "I don't care anymore. And you know what's even better? I don't care that I don't care."

It's stupid, but a little wave of hurt clenches up Sam's throat. "You are totally stoned, kid," Bobby's saying, sounding almost impressed. Dean shrugs, face lax, and Sam turns away in time to catch it when that weird grey ooze bubbles out of the turducken patty, spilling in a gooey slick over the table.

 

Bobby leaves them with strict instructions to get a liter or two of water in Dean while he goes out to find a van that can pass for surveillance. Three hours until the Biggerson's closes and they need to watch every person who goes in and out, figure out what the hell could be going on with the stupid turducken.

"Maybe the cook is doing it," Sam offers. Dean's kicked back on the nasty sofa, focused mostly on his little bag of potato chips and the glass of whiskey Sam didn't have the heart to refuse him. Still, Sam wants to keep him awake long enough to get him into the van, when Bobby eventually gets back. "Dean? What do you think?"

"What? Oh." He crunches another chip. "Nah. Probably get the stuff all frozen, anyway. In big, like, bags full of patties. Like that time I worked at McDonald's."

Sam smiles, a little. "Almost forgot about that. How long was that, two weeks?" He folds his arms on the table, leans his weight on his elbows. Watching Dean, loose and easy, he can remember that summer, just after Sam had turned twelve. They'd been stuck in a little Missouri town a lot longer than their dad had promised—surprise—and instead of stealing their dinner Dean had wrangled himself into brief legal employment, parlayed his one paycheck into bread, peanut butter, milk. Sam remembers making fun of the red outfit, the goofy visor, how Dean had gone pink to match it.

The guilt is minimal compared to everything else he's done. Still, he stirs a little, swallows. "Hey," he says, so Dean looks up at him, blinks heavily. "Thanks for doing that. The McDonald's thing."

Dean shrugs, loose and easy. He's finished the bag of chips and it crumples under his boot when he shifts on the sofa. "Had to take care of you," he says, eyes on his glass where he's filling it again, careful not to spill. "Anything you need, you know?"

He says it like it's no big thing. Sam's throat is tight. He knows that's not quite how Dean works—he's not slavishly devoted to Sam's whims, doesn't give up his self to make Sam happy. He's done it to keep Sam alive, though. More recently, he's done it to keep Sam sane, and Sam stands up, abruptly enough that he gets a little lightheaded.

They've got maybe twenty more minutes before Bobby gets back. He thinks it'll be enough.

Dean's occupied with staring at the ceiling when Sam settles next to him on the sofa. "Hey, can I have a sip of that?" he says, and Dean just holds out his glass, easy. He takes a gulp—and it's awful, burns harshly in the back of his throat, but whatever. He puts the glass back in Dean's hand, but wraps his fingers over Dean's when he goes to take it back. "I think it's time to talk."

"Aw, seriously?" Dean drops his head onto the sofa back with a little puff of dust, rolls it so he can give Sam a mildly skeptical look. "You always want to talk. You're such a chick, Sammy."

"Yeah, well," Sam says, stomach rolling nervously despite his light tone. "Figured I'd take advantage of your weakened state."

Dean snorts, skepticism melting into a smile. "You dog," Dean says, voice lazy.

Sam realizes he's still got his hand wrapped around Dean's, and drops it, wiping his sweaty palm off on his jeans. He's on the edge of his seat, but Dean's not in any state to read his body language. He watches while Dean picks his head up for another slurp of the cheap whiskey, tries to figure out where to start.

"So you wanna know why I don't want to fuck you?" Dean says. Sam freezes. Dean drops his head back onto the sofa, is watching him right back with glassed-over, stoned eyes. "Well, I guess—I mean, why I don't want you to fuck _me_ ," Dean clarifies, waving one hand in the air.

Sam breathes in, carefully. It still smells like grey-rotted turducken in here, layered over now with thick dust and the sharp, alcoholic haze of whiskey that's coming off of Dean. "Why?" he says, after a few seconds.

The wind has picked up a little, wheezing through the old timber of the house. Dean's attention has wandered away from him, while he stretches his legs out from the couch, crosses his boots at the ankle. "There was this time when we were in—where was it, Washington?" he says, apparently talking to his boots. Sam's riveted to his profile. "Yeah. It was raining, had to have been. Tiny little cabin we were in. Thought you were gonna kiss me, and I think I was gonna let you." He picks his head up for a deep swallow off his glass, now half-full. He tucks his free hand behind his head when he drops back down, utterly relaxed against the filthy upholstery. "Weird, huh."

Sam casts his mind back, but he doesn't remember; the number of times he's almost kissed Dean hardly bears thinking about, and it's impossible to pick one incident out. He bites his tongue, waits for Dean to continue—which he does after another few seconds, after licking his lips to shining.

"Sammy," he starts, and rolls his head again, looks at Sam as seriously as he can manage. "All this stuff you feel, it's not real."

Sam sits up a little straighter. That's not what he expected. "What?"

Dean struggles up, too, squirming upright with his elbows on the seat. He spills some whiskey—it lands on the floor with a wet splat—but doesn't seem to notice. "I mean, come on, man. How could it be?" He frowns a little, but he doesn't look upset. "I know, you've got all these memories of—I don't know, of _us_ , or whatever, but they're not real. None of it was real. It was all, you know, the devil. Messing with you." Dean stretches out one hand, fingertips clumsily dragging along the sleeve of Sam's jacket. Sam doesn't know if it was supposed to be comforting or not, but Dean's still blearily focused on him, serious. "And yeah, I know I've been going along with it. But it's—it's messed up, man. You get that, right?"

God, he sounds like he's trying to be _kind_. "Shut up," Sam says. Dean's mouth snaps closed and he blinks, startled. Sam tries to modulate his tone. "Dean, just—just shut up for a second."

Dean holds up his hands in surrender. He turns so that he's got his back to the arm of the sofa, one leg tucked up between them. Sam runs his hands through his hair, wishing he'd waited until Dean was sober.

"I don't know how to convince you," he says, eventually. "This isn't—it's not like we're doing this for kicks."

"Jeez," Dean says, with a little smile. "I'm insulted."

Sam smacks his knee. "Stop." Dean sticks his tongue out at that one, and Sam sighs. "Look, I can't make you understand. But try, okay? I know you're stoned, but can you—just listen?"

Dean's smile fades. Sam looks down at his lap. He's twisting his hands together so tight his knuckles are starting to hurt, and he pulls them apart, lays his palms flat on his thighs.

"You're my brother," he says, eyes on his hands. "I've never been confused about that. Maybe that makes it worse for you. That I can want all the stuff I want and still think of you as my dumbass big brother, but it's true, and I—I don't know. Maybe I should have tried to take a step back." He risks looking up. Dean's watching him, teeth sunk into his bottom lip. "All the crap I got in the cage, it hasn't wiped out our history. I wouldn't want it to. I mean, you taught me how to drive, how to tie my shoes. Eighteen years of my life, it was just you. Nothing can change that, not even Lucifer."

The name makes something flicker in his peripheral vision, but before he can check Dean's sitting up a little more, frowning.

"So how are you not going crazy?" Dean says, forgetting somehow that Sam _definitely_ is. "How is me, you know, showing you the bunny-ears just right there next to me taking it up the ass? That doesn't bother you?"

Sam shrugs, helpless. "I don't know. Maybe it should, but... it doesn't feel wrong to me. Not even a little bit." Dean's lips part a little with confusion, and Sam shakes his head. "I guess I should be sorry, I should have freaked out at some point, but I didn't and I'm not going to now."

Dean scrubs a hand over his face. He looks tired, bewildered. "You're my brother, and I love you," Sam says, and Dean looks up at him with those glass-green eyes. Sam swallows. "But you're something else, too."

"Sammy," Dean says.

Even high, he manages to make the name rich with meaning, and Sam wants to put his hands on Dean's face, haul him into his arms and sleep this conversation away.

"If it's hurting you, I'll stop," he says, even if his gut revolts. "I'll never bring it up again, we'll forget the whole thing. But I'm never going to leave you. You can try to make me if you want— you can take risks, or whatever you said last night. But I won't ever hate you. I'll just end up following you around everywhere, making sure you're okay, so you might as well keep me around."

There's no way he can forget. It sounds like a lie even as it's coming out of his mouth, but when he risks a look Dean's eyes are wet. "I don't want you to leave," he says, voice quiet.

Sam swallows. "Good." He waits a few seconds. "What about—the other thing?"

"The other—? Oh." Dean drags the back of his hand over his mouth, weirdly childlike in the context of this conversation, enough so that Sam feels a flush rising under his skin. "I dunno. I mean, the sex is good, you—you know what you're doing, huh, Sammy?" he says, with a little weak smile. "But I don't—um. I don't know, I—"

"It's okay," Sam says, desperate to interrupt that bewildered train of thought. Light flickers through the trees, flashing in the window. Bobby, coming back with the van along the narrow dirt track. "We don't have to talk about it right away."

Dean nods, blinking sleepily. Sam looks at him, at his tired and lax face, and makes a decision. "When you're ready," he says, talking low and fast before Bobby can get back to the cabin. "Not a second before. Okay? Then we'll do whatever you want."

He puts his hand on Dean's knee, shaking it a little for emphasis. There's a honk, outside, Bobby pulling around to load some guns into whatever van he found. Dean startles a little, eyes opening wide, and Sam can't help one last kiss, presses his lips to Dean's forehead with his nose in soft, sweaty hair, before he stands, pulling Dean up to his feet as he goes. "Come on, man," he says, and Dean lets him wrap an arm around his shoulders, lets himself be led down the steps to where Bobby's just opened up the van, lets Sam settle him on his back in the dark interior. It's cold and Sam wishes he could cover him up with a blanket. "Sleep tight," he says instead, but Dean's eyes are already closed, his face turned away. Sam closes the door on him as quietly as he can.

 

They end up outside the local distribution center for Biggerson's—Bobby got the address off the general manager, who'd claimed that all of their ingredients, meat included, came straight from there. It's only about twenty minutes outside of Hammonton, halfway to Philadelphia. In the back, Dean's sleeping hard, and Sam settles into his seat, makes sure he's staring out the windshield at the receiving dock.

"He doin' okay?" Bobby asks, quietly.

Sam nods. "Sleeping it off."

Bobby snorts. "Tryptophan coma."

Sam thumbs at his scar. It's almost eleven o'clock, but the lights in the distribution center are still on, the parking lot still brightly lit. Still a chance that something will happen, and so he can't be distracting both of them.

"What about you?" Bobby says, out of nowhere, and Sam glances over to find that solid gaze fixed on him. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Sam says, automatically. Bobby's eyes sharpen, disbelief obvious, and Sam looks away, focuses on the surveillance they're supposed to be doing. "Just worried about Dean."

"He'll be fine, Sam." Bobby's gruff, as always, but he sounds sincere. "Pretty sure a sandwich isn't gonna take down your brother."

Sam smiles, but it's fake and he's sure Bobby can tell. "I know. I meant more generally."

"Meaning?"

Sam sighs. "I mean, ever since—you know, since he lost Cas, and since the whole thing with my wall." He scrapes along the tender edge of the scar with his thumbnail, reminds himself not to give too much away. "Just seems like he's going through the motions, but maybe he's not the same Dean."

There's silence from the driver's seat for a little while, broken by Dean's soft snoring. "He's been doing this a long time, Sam," Bobby says, eventually.

"I know," Sam says. He glances into the back, at the curled-up shape in the dim. "That's kind of my point."

Bobby's giving him one of those long, assessing looks. He turns back to the empty parking lot in front of them to avoid it. "You know, he kept you together for six months," Bobby says. "Don't know if you remember how, because he didn't tell me much. Wouldn't hear of doing anything different, though, wouldn't tell you for anything."

Sam nods. "Yeah, I know." And what Bobby doesn't know won't hurt him, he thinks.

"Point is, here you are worrying about him, and all he does is worry about you." Sam looks over to find Bobby's expression gone exasperated. "Who's left to live their own lives, here?"

Sam shrugs. Like he'd told Dean, that stopped being an option a long time ago. Before Hell, before demon blood and deals. Took him a while to recognize it, but now—well. He's not letting go.

 

They follow the meat distribution truck as discreetly as they can for being the only other car on the road in the middle of the night. Dean wakes up with a start when they park again outside yet another factory building, this one just outside Trenton. Sam glances back in time to see him rubbing a weary hand over his face, but then Bobby's handing back a thermos of coffee and he turns away so he won't have to meet Dean's eyes. He doesn't have the strength for that right now.

They watch while another car pulls up in the parking lot, while a Hispanic guy gets out and is met by some man in a lab coat. "Wait," Bobby says, and grabs up the binoculars. "That's—that's the doctor from Sioux Falls, the big-mouth that tried to eat Sheriff Mills—" and then that dick waiter Brandon is getting pulled out of the trunk, and then everything goes straight to hell.

 

Bobby dies. It's one of the worst things that has ever happened.

For the first time in a very long while, Sam finds himself thinking about their dad. Little memories that flicker up when he's signing the paperwork for the hospital. Intellectually, he knows that the haze of grief is filtering away some of the crueler memories, but his heart is a cold clutch in his chest and he's clinging, now, to the faint recollection of patting at a scratchy, prematurely grey beard. To the engraved-steel solidity of watching him throw his head back on a laugh, the way he'd drive with his left hand on the wheel and his right free to bat away Dean's attempts to mess with the radio.

It's maybe some kind of shield from the far-off feeling of sitting in Bobby's lap, going over the lines of a simple Latin translation. Laying back on the sun-warmed metal of an old beater in the junkyard, closing his eyes against the noon light and grinning as Bobby and Dean argued over how best to fix up the Impala, this time.

"Sir?" He opens his eyes. He's still in the hospital corridor, still standing in the white light of morning with Bobby's weird last word scrawled in messy numbers on his hand. This is not a hallucination. The attending nurse gives him a sympathetic look, tightened just slightly with annoyance at having to get his attention for who knows how long. "Sir, we'll need to know what funeral home you'll be working with."

"Sam, pay attention," Lucifer says, leaning up against the counter next to him. "We don't have all day."

"Right," Sam says. Right. Dean's gone already, finding a funeral home with bad security that they'll be able to break into easily. Because they have to steal Bobby's body back, so they can cremate him properly, as hunters do, because he's—Bobby is—

"Um, sorry," he says, and the nurse's expression turns over to pity.

Sam's used to victims saying things like _Don't look at me like that,_ and _I don't want your pity_ , and sometimes he just wants to smack them upside the head and tell them it's the stupidest thing he's ever heard. The world's hard enough, scrapes you down to your bones enough. A little pity from a stranger has been the only thing that's gotten him through whole months of his sorry, burnt-out life.

He mumbles excuses to the nurse, takes a few steps away down the corridor. There are twin sighs behind him, one real and one in his imagination, and he wrings desperately at the scar on his hand because it's just too much. Not now.

He'd sat in the stiff little hospital chair and been treated to a hellscape, blood and chains and what felt like knives in his ribs, but right in the center was the white bed where Bobby's body wasn't waking up, where the nurses and doctors swarmed like so many useless flies. Dean had stood just in front of him, but he wasn't any kind of shield, his shoulders shuddering as he tried not to cry in public. Like anyone would blame him.

He's breathing carefully, standing in the hallway by himself, when Dean shows back up. He takes one look at Sam and heads back to the desk to talk to the nurse, face blank and set. Sam watches him, looks at the bruised knuckles on his right hand, the little details of his torn jeans, the dark circles under his eyes.

"Hey," he hears, and somehow Dean's right in front of him, voice gravel-shot, rough. He doesn't frown at Sam's inattention, only grabs his arm to start propelling him along the corridor. "Come on, we've gotta go."

Dean has already called the funeral home. They wait while Bobby's body is collected by the large white van, ignoring the rehearsed sympathy of the undertaker while they make fake arrangements for a funeral that won't happen. In the afternoon, they stake out the funeral home while mourners come and go, while normal people hold wakes and memorials. Dean picked an undertaker in Sicklerville, one near the outskirts of town so they won't be noticed. The undertaker and his assistant close up shop at ten o'clock, when the night has gone dark and frosty, and they only wait fifteen minutes before breaking into the home, moving silently down to the basement to find the newest body bag and haul it back out into the dark.

The pyre they build in the woods outside of town. The spot isn't special, but it is quiet. They stack the wood high, soak it in gasoline and salt. Dean says the words, because Sam can't get his throat to open. They burn him in the body bag, despite the smell of plastic, because neither of them can face dragging out his naked corpse. The spirit will burn from his bones anyway. Just in case, Sam puts the torn hat on the fire, making sure the blood on it burns, too. The fire is hot and they're standing too close. At their backs, the night curls around them, cold and bleak and very, very dark.

The drive back out to the cabin is silent. They take turns showering to get the smell of cooked flesh and ash off their skin—Dean first, Sam second. Sam soaps his hair and the shower stall fills with mint, the water beating down on his shoulders so cold he starts shivering and can't stop. When he's finished, he turns off the water and stands shaking, with his hands over his eyes. It takes him ten minutes to get dressed. When he gets downstairs, Dean is gone, a note on the table that says _Back soon, don't wait up_. As though Sam could do anything else.

 

 

Dean gets catastrophically drunk, after Bobby.

They're still hunkered down in the pit of a house in the Pine Barrens. Two days have passed. Long enough that Sam worked up the nerve to call Rufus, who received the news in silence and then hung up on him. They're going to head out to his cabin tomorrow, once they're sure he's gone. They don't have anywhere else to go.

Dean isn't quite slurring, because he's had a lifetime of pretending to be less drunk than he really is. And really, in recent years he hasn't been able to get drunk, not all the way. Too much tolerance built up, and isn't that a familiar, bitter story. When Dean does manage to get truly wasted he vacillates between soft charm and honesty, piercing as a flechette, and Sam would know. 

He's been trying to ignore Dean all through this long, cold twilight, while he drinks and drinks, silent and focused. Self-medicating. Sam lets him, focuses on trying to research monsters who bleed slow and black and who twine into the people that you love, wrapping around all the parts of who they are and killing them so slowly that they barely notice. Lucifer and Michael curl together on the little kitchen counter, whispering quietly into each other's ears and then snickering in Sam's direction. He's been trying to ignore that, too, but the particularly fine craftsmanship of his hallucinations means that key words keep filtering clear as gunshots into his hearing—and right now they're talking about _Dean, Dean, Dean_. It's hard to concentrate.

There's a slow drag of hollow glass over wood. He glances up to find Dean reclined on the couch, swirling the bottom of an almost-empty whiskey bottle over the pitted hardwood floor. He's pink-faced, glassy-eyed, his bottom lip bitten and wet and flushed. In another circumstance Sam would be chubbing up in his jeans, but like this—Dean's blinking steadily at him, the corner of his mouth pulled up as though something's funny.

"What?" Sam says, willing to be charmed, even if this Dean can hardly mean it. It's too soon, the grief still sitting hollow in Sam's stomach.

"Sammy." Dean almost sings his name, says it again apparently just to feel it in his mouth. Sam smiles a little, even if it feels like his heart can't take it. A sip from the bottle and Dean tucks one hand behind his head, his eyes slipping half-closed. The bottle tucks in against his thigh, glass sliding up the inseam of his jeans, and when he spreads his knees a little heat curls into Sam's stomach, despite everything. Doesn't matter that nothing can come of it. Dean must catch something of it in his face, because he grins a little sloppy grin, spreads his knees wider. "Sammy, Sammy," he says again, and curls his fingers tight around the neck of the bottle. "You scare the shit out of me sometimes, Sammy."

The swirl of heat turns toxic. "What?" he says, unsteady.  
  
Dean's grin slips a little, teeth pressing into his bottom lip and his eyelids falling shut. His head drops backwards into the arm of the couch, like it's too heavy for his neck to hold. "You know, when you were little—" He pauses, runs his tongue over the toothmarks. In his periphery, Sam can see that Lucifer is looking right at him, but he doesn't dare look back. Dean drops one leg down to the floor, denim pulling tight over his thigh, and he's made a space Sam could crawl into, where he could hold Dean down and stop his mouth, but they aren't doing that anymore, are they. Sam promised.

"Man, you used to drive me crazy. Asking all kinds of questions. There was this lady who babysat us once—where were we? Texas? Nevada? I don't know. Caught me making up stories for you, 'cause I didn't know the answers to half the crap you were asking. About why the moon followed you around and, like, how the wind worked. She said," and Dean breathes out a laugh through his nose, "she said all moms have to do that, sooner or later. 'Cause their kids want more than they've got."

Sam becomes aware of a throbbing pain and looks down to find that he's gripping his scarred palm so tightly the fingers are turning purple. He spreads his hands carefully over the rickety table, keeps his eyes on the patterns in the grain. "She was calling you my mom, huh?" He tries to keep his voice light.

"Yeah," Dean says with a shrug. "I got mad, then, but—whatever." He thumbs the wet opening of the whiskey bottle, slings his other arm over his chest like he's giving himself a hug. His eyes stay closed.

"Dean." The sentence won't quite form. At least they're alone in the room, now. He takes a deep breath and tries again. "What did you mean, I scare you?"

Dean's eyes slit open and a lazy smile pulls across his face before he finally picks his head back up to look at Sam. "Spend my whole life running around after you, trying to answer all your frickin' questions, keep you safe, and you just keep getting away from me." He's still forced down to calm by the booze swirling through his blood. They've had conversations on this theme before, but usually through blood and bruises and Dean's reluctant tears, not—like this. Dean's studying his face. Not smiling, anymore, but not upset. "Can't ever seem to keep up. And you're gonna go again, and then what."

Heat pricks at the back of Sam's eyes and he blinks hard, because Dean's voice is slow and easy, placid with certainty. "I'm not going to leave. I promised, remember. Not unless you want me to."

"Right," Dean says, just a touch of a scoff, and drops his head back down, throws his arm over his face. "You're barely here now."

Sam's stomach turns over. "What are you talking about? Dean, I'm right here."

His voice isn't anything close to steady and something in it must penetrate Dean's fog, because he pulls his arm back, pushes up on his elbows to frown at Sam. "Yeah, I know, Sammy," he says, and he sounds like he's trying to be reassuring. "But you're not—I mean, you understand, right? You're not my baby brother anymore. I don't know you. I want to, but you're so—"

Dean cuts himself off, shaking his head. Sam wants to stride over there, pull him into a hug and make the promise with his whole body. He tangles his hands together instead, presses them between his knees so he'll stay still. "Sorry, Sammy," Dean says, and Sam looks up to find him wet-eyed, at last.

"It's not your fault, Dean." Dean shakes his head again and drops to his back, turns his face in toward the back of the couch. Sam _aches_ , wants to be anywhere but here, wants to run and run until there's no air left to burn. He won't, though, he can't. Not with how Dean's already slipping down into sleep, sprawled loose and open and available for the taking, because even despite all his misery some part of him trusts Sam, believes in him even when Sam himself doesn't. Sam gets to his feet, quietly, and goes the few feet over to settle down on the floorboards next to the couch, close enough to touch.

He guesses he should feel lucky. That Dean is drunk enough to have forgotten Bobby, at least for the moment. Sam listens to his breathing as it slows and steadies, watches the rise and fall of his chest.

There's a shrill scrape of wood on wood, over to his right. The hallucinations have been coming thicker and faster, since Bobby died. He does his best to operate normally, so Dean won't suspect anything. Not fair to pile it on to him right now. Anyway, he can handle it.

"Sam," he hears, and he can't help looking up, because that isn't Lucifer.

Michael is sitting in his abandoned chair, arms folded over his chest, watching him. Blue-white light from the camping lantern haloes him from behind, so Sam can't see much of his face, and he looks away, looks back at Dean.

"Lucifer was wrong, you know. You're not the stronger brother." Sam takes in a deep breath, lets it out slowly. "You're weak. Sinful. Not what you want, but that you can barely stop yourself from taking it. It's pathetic."

No, he doesn't want to stop. He wants to drag Dean onto him, wants to hold his face between his hands and kiss him slow, wants to look into pleasure-drugged eyes and see his brother looking back. He wants quiet mornings when he can just wrap himself around Dean and feel him real and warm with life, safe as Sam can make him.

He shakes his head, turns his face against the rough-woven upholstery of the couch. What he wants. Dean is sacked out, sleeping the hard sleep of exhausted grief. Sam settles a careful hand on his ankle, offering a little warm comfort that Dean wouldn't accept if he were awake, or sober. What Sam wants, at this moment, counts very little. He only wishes he could give Dean what he needs.

"You should have stayed in the cage with us. If you hadn't come out, Dean would never have left Lisa, would have stayed safe. Paradise, right? A safe, normal life. What you always wanted. And you're never going to be able to give it to him. All you do is stand by while the people he loves die. How long until you're one of them?"

Sam takes the hand off of Dean's ankle and drops it to his own, digs the knife out of his boot and has it open in a second.

A hand settles on his shoulder. "Sam," Lucifer says, and Sam closes his eyes. "It'd be kinder to let him be."

He opens his eyes and looks at Dean. The hand on his shoulder squeezes, a comforting, reassuring grip, and he turns the knife over in his hand and digs the point of it into his scar. Not deep; just enough to reopen it, make it bleed. The touch on his shoulder disappears, and when he checks the chair is empty.

He rubs his thumb into the blood in his palm, smears it around so he can check the cut. He'll need to put a bandage on it again, for at least a day. Dean might ask about it—but then, he might not. Sam doesn't mind, either way.

He doesn't have any illusions about his own strength. He's weak. He's been led around by his desires before. He heaves himself to his feet, goes back to the table and settles into the chair so recently occupied by an archangel. The laptop screen is crammed with information about Dick Roman and his companies, conspiracy theories and rumor. He minimizes all of that and opens his email—his oldest one, the one he'd used at Stanford that he's never had the heart to get rid of. The interface has changed so much as to be unrecognizable, but he can still find the drafts folder, where there's just one unsent message. No text, just attachments, and he finds the one he's looking for.

In the picture, Dean's twenty-four. He'd come to visit Sam at school, unexpected, two weeks before Sam's birthday. He hadn't mentioned where their dad was at the time, and Sam hadn't asked—just let Dean buy them a twelve-pack and drive them out to the hills south of the city, texted Jess to tell her he'd be working late at the library, not to wait up. Dean had been digging in the box of tapes when he'd found something—Sam doesn't remember what, now—and paused, silent and still. Sam had been four beers in at the time and had fumbled for his phone, captured the expression: eyes downturned, mouth parted, soft and for a moment nothing like the brash image he'd always associated with his brother. That night was the last time he saw Dean before Jess died.

He looks so young. He is young: eyes still unlined, brow unfurrowed. In the picture, it's still three years before their dad is set to die, five before he'll go to Hell. Sam wants to reach into the past, wrap his arms around the boy in the picture and keep him safe, but—well. Safety has never been an option. The boy in the picture isn't the Dean he knows, anyway. He's beautiful, but he's a concept, _big brother_ , someone Sam hadn't understood until it was far too late. He understands him now, though. Understands how strong he'd been, how he'd borne them both through the choppy seas of their childhood, been brother and mother and father, worked humiliating jobs and stolen and lied to keep both of them alive, and for what. To lie drunk and bereft on a filthy couch in the backwoods of New Jersey, strength dwindled away.

Sam closes the picture. It's his turn to be strong. He's taken his time about it, sure, but when it comes down to it, there's only one person he's ever been able to be strong for. There's a feeling starting in his gut, trickling in to fill the dark hollow of grief that Bobby's loss left. He's been feeling it for a while now, and he can't believe it's taken him this long to recognize it. He folds his arms over his chest, tears pricking at the back of his eyes. He hasn't named it to himself, not since Jessica, because this is the big one, the one that could destroy him. The one that has. It doesn't matter, though, because he's made his choice. For Dean, he'll stay. He'll be strong. He'll be whatever Dean needs him to be.

Sometimes people talk about love at first sight and Sam knows it's mostly trash, because he's a big boy and he knows about the complications of hormones, chemical reactions, biological and evolutionary impulse. Maybe for some people that first white-hot blast of desire does mellow into love, but for him it has never happened that way. It takes years to fall in love, he thinks, and looks at Dean. Almost thirty years. But then, after that, it's everything.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't believe I finally finished. I call this the "Gone With The Wind" ending. I'm thinking there needs to be one more story in this series, from Dean's POV, to tie everything up with a happier ending, but it kind of works if you end it here. Would appreciate a comment if you have any thoughts. Thanks for reading.


End file.
